Keywords

Introduction

Volunteerism is essential to civic life, but it is also key to the processes whereby economic, social, and cultural elites become civil society elites. Research emphasising the value of civic engagement generally assumes that inequality is not endemic to volunteerism and is instead merely something that arises on account of inadequate rules and management or as a result of the substitution of paid membership for in-person civic participation (Skocpol, 2013). However, others have observed that civic involvement often amplifies the voices of and supports the interests of wealthier and better-educated individuals and groups (Verba et al., 1995). Furthermore, elite integration through civic involvement can reproduce status and power differentials within civil society organisations by leading to hierarchies of types of civic engagement. For example, in the case of parents volunteering in the Parent-Teacher Association (PTA) discussed below, different types of parental involvement (e.g., directing PTA communications vs donating significant sums of money to the PTA) are not equivalent and have a different relationship to elite integration.

In this chapter, I examine elite integration through the case of involvement in a PTA in a New York City public elementary school I call Bricks School. I show how parents with elite standing outside of their children’s school become elite PTA volunteers within the school. Following the definition of civil society elite motivating this volume, I see PTAs as civil society organisations with significant and increasing control over educational resources and decision-making. The elite parents studied in this research parlay their elite social positions into leadership positions in the PTA. These parents solidify their standing in the PTA and the school by accessing more ‘do good’ capital (Dean, 2020).

Methods

Data were collected as part of a broader study of civil society organisations in New York City. The research was conducted by me and a research assistant. We carried out fieldwork at Bricks School between Fall 2015 and Spring 2018. We attended PTA meetings, volunteered at events, participated in organising committees, and socialised with parents before and after school. We identified ourselves as researchers and openly took notes and recorded the meetings. After the first year of fieldwork, we supplemented ongoing observations with 24 interviews of a purposive heterogeneous sample of parents. The interviews focused on parental involvement, including parents’ financial contributions and time commitments to the school and the PTA. Throughout interviews, pseudonyms are used for the school and all research participants. Only the real names of public figures and government officials are retained. NVIVO qualitative data analysis software was used to organise the data, which were first index coded and then coded for emergent topics, and finally thematically coded for additional topics important for the present article (Deterding & Waters, 2021).

Background

Elite integration through PTA volunteerism unfolds in the broader context of school-supporting civil society organisations, including PTAs, becoming more embedded in public school systems. This embedding process took a particular form in New York City and in the school where this research was conducted.

The Growing Power of the PTA

PTAs are important school-based civic associations (Christensen et al., 2016; Crawford & Levitt, 1999; Murray et al., 2019; Putnam, 2000). PTAs also provide funds and other necessary resources. Furthermore, they represent parents in school governance, and they can act as an advocate for the school through their visibility and the participation of their members in broader social and governmental institutions such as school boards and city councils. Like other civil society organisations, PTAs foster participation. Parent volunteers in the PTA can take an active role in school governance, and they build social capital through opportunities for socialisation, civic training, and the development of helpful parent networks (Christensen et al., 2016; Putnam, 2000; Small, 2009). The literature on volunteerism and civil society tends to assume that PTAs and their parent volunteers produce social capital with a salubrious effect that extends beyond parents and the school to democracy and civil society in general (Christensen et al., 2016; Crawford & Levitt, 1999; Putnam, 2000).

Parents have long joined together to form PTAs and other school-supporting organisations. However, research in the United States documents a dramatic increase in the money flowing into schools through such organisations (Brunner & Imazeki, 2004; Christensen et al., 2016; De Leon et al., 2010; Haar, 2002; Murray et al., 2019; Nelson & Gazley, 2014). The number of PTAs in the United States tripled between 1995 and 2010 (Nelson & Gazley, 2014), and PTA revenues have also risen by 3.9 times over the same period, topping $400 million in 2010 (Nelson & Gazley, 2014). This amount may seem small compared to the combined $593.7 billion that states, municipalities, and the federal government spent on public elementary and secondary education in the United States in the same year (Brunner & Sonstelie, 2003; Dixon, 2012). However, PTA fundraising is concentrated in schools and districts with higher-income families (Addonisio, 2000; Brown et al., 2017; Brunner & Imazeki, 2004), and in 2010 only 20% of school districts had at least one revenue-generating PTA (Nelson & Gazley, 2014). There is also state-based variation in the relationship between PTA revenues and urbanicity, school size, and school diversity.Footnote 1 Due to the uneven distribution of PTAs and revenue-generating PTAs in particular, and because PTAs and other school-supporting organisations are independent of the schools they support, parent volunteer hours are not reported and their monetary contributions are not typically included in the schools’ records of educational expenditures (Haar, 2002). As a result, measures of investments in education likely underestimate parental inputs through school-supporting civil society organisations as a source of educational inequality (Addonisio, 2000; Brown et al., 2017).

The onset of rising PTA financial contributions to public schools occurred in the mid-1990s as a result of policy changes (Sattin-Bajaj & Roda, 2020). During this period, education policy in the United States began emphasising parental volunteerism in schools as a key component of school quality. In 1994, President Bill Clinton revised national education policy, and parents and communities were the focus of the new policy (Schwartz et al., 2000; Superfine, 2005). Prompted by the national reforms, many states and municipalities increased outreach to parents. Following this, New York State introduced the requirement that all New York City schools have an active parent association or PTA, a school leadership team including parents, and a community education council made up of local citizens.Footnote 2 These laws were implemented in a New York City school reform emphasising improving communication between schools, parents, and communities (Henig et al., 2011; O’Day et al., 2011). Each school received a full-time parent coordinator—a paid administrative staff member responsible for managing school-parent relationships and coordinating with PTAs and other community organisations that work with and serve the city’s public schools (Henig et al., 2011). Schools were also directed to expand their collaboration with education-supporting civil society organisations (Henig et al., 2011). Solicitation of parent input was formalised through the development of an annual survey of parents. Additionally, an annual quality review of schools was established. The parent survey is included in the quality review.

These reforms directly integrated PTAs and other civil society organisations into the governmental apparatus of public education. The reforms mandated parent volunteerism and required close ties between civil society organisations and the school. They also made parents and the satisfaction of parents very important to school principals and other educational administrators. With the reforms, New York City schools were now evaluated partly based on their relationships with parents and their ties to the school PTA. To understand the practical significance of this elevation of PTA organisations for elite integration, we turn to the case of Bricks School.

Bricks: A Segregated School with an Integrated PTA

Bricks School sits amid public housing projects in a Manhattan neighbourhood that has undergone rapid gentrification. The school serves children between the ages of 4 and 11 years old. The socio-economic extremes of New York City are represented in the school. In 2016, about 25% of people in the school’s post code lived below the poverty line; meanwhile, more than 20% of people lived in households with an annual income greater than $200,000, putting them in the top 2% of households in the United States, and in the top 5% of households even in well-off New York City (US Census Bureau, 2017).

Bricks offers a ‘gifted and talented’ (gifted) program, an accelerated academic track with admission by examination, which is most popular for students from wealthier and more educated families. The school also serves ‘general education’ (GenEd) students who live within the immediate neighbourhood, including low-income public housing. The school is racially and economically segregated along these two academic tracks. In 2016, approximately 40% of students came from families receiving public assistance. In the same year, about 30% of students were Hispanic, about 25% Asian, 25% White, and 15% Black. In 2016, around half of approximately 600 students had a low-enough family income to qualify for free or reduced-priced lunch.Footnote 3

Despite the segregation of educational tracks, there is only one PTA at Bricks. As previously mentioned, New York City public schools are required to have a PTA, and all parents are automatically members. According to the city regulations, PTAs are charged with advocating for students and their families, facilitating communication between parents and the school, organising activities, and supporting the school through fundraising, volunteerism, and educational programming for parents.Footnote 4

The Rise of the Bricks PTA

The power of the Bricks PTA grew as a result of a funding crisis. After the introduction of the gifted program, half of the seats in the school were filled by children who received top scores on the New York City gifted and talented examination. Children taking and scoring well on the exam were more likely to be Asian and White than Black or Latino, to be residents of wealthier neighbourhoods, and to have access to paid exam preparation (Gootman & Gebeloff, 2008). The influx of ‘gifted’ students shifted the school’s demographics. As a result, the school lost $250,000 in funding when the percentage of low-income students dropped below Manhattan’s 60%Footnote 5 eligibility threshold for special funds for low-income schools. According to multiple parents who were in the school at that time, the principal addressed the parents at a PTA meeting and announced that unless parents raised additional money, she would discontinue the music program and curtail spending on school supplies. At that time, the Bricks PTA did not prioritise fundraising. According to the records of the PTA, the organisation had not raised more than $12,000 in any given year for which records were available. Now, galvanised by the loss of funds, a group of PTA parents held a fundraiser. They raised about $80,000 and saved the music program.

In subsequent years, PTA fundraising continued and accelerated. Just a few years later, in 2016–2017, the revenue of the Bricks PTA was almost twice the amount of the lost special funding. In 2016 the Bricks PTA budget was approximately $450,000.Footnote 6 The Bricks PTA raises funds through classic PTA fundraisers such as raffles, bake sales, coin drives, and book fairs (see Putnam, 2000, pp. 55–57, 302). However, the organisation’s largest sources of income are a $150-per-person black-tie gala and auction, a direct-appeal fundraising campaign that targets parents, aggressive pursuit of corporate matches,Footnote 7 and a walk-a-thon. Throughout this research, the PTA continuously expanded its offerings of educational and enrichment activities and requested even larger financial contributions from parents. While this research was ongoing, the requested contribution increased substantially, from just a few hundred dollars per child to $2000. Fundraising totals increased by more than 30% over the same period.

The loss of special funding transformed the Bricks PTA from a low-key civic organisation into an elite school-supporting civil society organisation with substantial influence. However, in actuality the resulting change in fundraising activity brought the Bricks PTA in line with other high-revenue PTAs (Brown et al., 2017). The PTA money was spent on community activities such as school talent shows, holiday performances, community dinners, and a neighbourhood fair. The PTA also provided an assistant teacher for each classroom, offered supplementary allowances for the teachers and principal, secured preparatory courses for the required standardised tests, and purchased materials for music, theatre, and robotics classes, among other things.

Elite Integration through the PTA

Consistent with elite integration in other civil society organisations, the central position of the PTA and parent volunteerism at Bricks led to the centralisation of power in the hands of just a few parents, most particularly parents who were members of the economic, social, and cultural elite and who tended to have children in the gifted program. These individuals raised hundreds of thousands of dollars to support the school. Through their involvement, they had a disproportionate impact on the operation of the school and were able to use their position to translate their elite status outside of the school into elite status within the school. Although they were not the only parent volunteers, a status hierarchy emerged in which elite parents were able to convert their greater economic, social, and cultural capital into more ‘do good’ capital that they leveraged to build their social networks and gain access to leadership positions.

Elite integration through PTA volunteerism unfolded through attaching symbolic value to high-budget PTAs, using PTA involvement to hoard opportunities, and policing elite boundaries in access to PTA networks and leadership.

The Symbolic Value of the PTA

The policy emphasis on parental participation made the connection between parent volunteerism and school success clear—a good school was defined as a school with engaged parents. Given the emphasis on involvement, PTA fundraising totals and the programs funded by the parents provide easy-to-read metrics of school quality.

In interviews, parents discussed how they used information about the PTA budget and PTA-funded programs to evaluate and select schools. Many parents discussed attending an information night for prospective families. At those events, a member of the PTA leadership was there to present information about the PTA budget and PTA-funded amenities at the school. In the interviews, parents discussed comparing the Bricks PTA budget with PTA budgets of other schools they considered for their child. Some parents admitted that Bricks had been their second choice after the gifted program at a nearby school known throughout the district for its, as one parent put it, ‘million-dollar PTA’.

This monetary value provided by the PTA is partly symbolic. Even parents who did not believe their financial support or volunteering would impact their own children’s education directly had an incentive to be engaged in order to ensure that the school retained its reputation. In interviews, some parents explained that their children did not participate in supplementary school activities, but all the same a PTA budget, a list of parent-provided enrichment activities, and the smaller child-to-teacher ratios resulting from parent-funded assistant teachers provided easy-to-read metrics of just how wealthy and connected other Bricks parents were.

Opportunity Hoarding

Elite integration through parent volunteerism in public schools leads to opportunity hoarding because the resources that the PTAs and other school-supporting civil society organisations provide confer school-based advantages not available in schools without such support (Murray et al., 2019). Furthermore, elite parents who donate their time and money to the school are in a better position to exert influence within the school to secure specific advantages for their children. Past research has observed that influential parents leverage their power to ensure that the school places their children with highly regarded teachers or disregards teachers’ placement recommendations regarding access to accelerated and advanced courses (Lewis & Diamond, 2015). Past research has also observed that the children of parents who support the school may receive preferential treatment in the classroom (Posey-Maddox, 2014).

The use of PTA funds could also facilitate opportunity hoarding as many PTA-provided programs and resources were selected specifically by the PTA leadership and were intended to provide an academic edge to Bricks students. Parents discussed the advantages resulting from the introduction of teaching assistants who decreased the teacher-student ratio. PTA funds provided after-school test prep courses for children in the grades that take the New York State educational exams, which are a determining factor in middle school placement in New York City’s competitive and high-stakes school environment. Most of the additional enrichment activities provided by the PTA—activities such as track and field, theatre, music, chess, and robotics—may not have such an explicit academic component, but will still help students to appear ‘well-rounded’, a characteristic that can be an advantage for students in competition with other academically qualified peers (Dumais, 2006).

Within-school opportunity hoarding is evident in the way these activities were often directed towards the ‘gifted’ students. In an interview, the PTA treasurer, Nora, describes ongoing challenges in ensuring that the immense resources of the PTA are used to benefit all the children at Bricks, not just the children in the ‘gifted’ program:

We try very hard to make grade-wide enrichment, but the problem, for example, is CloudPerfect [a large technology company] comes in for robotics in the 3rd and 4th grade. The GenEd teachers just don’t want it. They are so focused on getting their students to pass the [basic New York State] tests that they just don’t have time. So, enrichment sometimes steers more to the “gifted” kids…

Opportunity hoarding was also evident in the way parents who were active in the PTA expected that their ability to leverage their economic, social, and cultural resources on behalf of the PTA and the school would yield influence and preferential treatment. For example, Nancy is a wealthy parent in her late 40s. She has two children who attend the ‘gifted’ program at Bricks and another child who attends an elite private school. She and her husband have brought significant money to the school through direct donations and their influence in another school-supporting private foundation that awarded a substantial grant to Bricks. She acknowledges that their status in the school is elevated by these financial inputs, and this means they have greater access to the school principal and receive preferential treatment. According to Nancy, this is to be expected. She told me, ‘Yeah, you do get extra because you are doing more. Yeah, the people at the PTA should get their ticket first, and if you want your ticket first, show up’.

Elite People Become Elite Volunteers

In reality, it was not the simple ‘do more, get more’ conversion of inputs into ‘do good’ capital, as Nancy described. Among the parent volunteers at Bricks, it is the social, cultural, and economic elites who become PTA elites. Although all parents are members of the PTA and many Bricks parents make substantial commitments to the school, boundary processes produce a stratified membership. Parent inclusion in the PTA leadership, networking, and friendships develop unevenly, reproducing the boundaries of class and race.

Forming friendships and building networks. Many parents expressed a strong sense of collectivism. They referred to the school as a ‘community’ or a ‘family’. But this sense of community was different from the establishment of friendships among parents in a position to volunteer more. According to Nancy, PTA ‘involvement is a way to figure out who you are going to be friends with. One of the things I really appreciate about the school is I have made friends with people that I just so admire’.

The limits of inclusion for involved parents who were not from the elite are most clear in the case of Nicole. A native New Yorker in her mid-30s, Nicole is a single parent and college graduate with health issues that keep her from working. She and her son live in public housing, and she collects welfare and child support to make ends meet. Her child is a GenEd student. In her first year at Bricks, Nicole was encouraged by some of the board members to run for a leadership position. She was elected and served in different capacities for many years, often as the self-described ‘unicorn’ standing out as the only GenEd parent, black parent, and resident of public housing in the PTA leadership. After her first year on the PTA, Nicole was asked to run for a position on the School Leadership Team (an elected representative of Bricks parents who deals with curricular issues at the school level). She was elected to that position. At the time of our interview, Nicole was also on the citywide ballot for the Community Education Council (CEC, an elected representative of parents in the school district parents). She was not elected to the CEC, but would consider running again in the future.

Nicole says she is too involved at school. When she described her volunteer work, she listed her tasks:

I go [to the PTA office] probably like two or three times a week, and then if I don’t have a doctor’s appointment or if there are other things going on, then more. Like if there is the bake sale, then I have to take care of that. And if people are dropping off money, I have to collect the money, and I have to email parent reminders. We have the PTA meeting at the beginning of the month. I prepare for that and help out with that. We have executive board meetings. Prepare for that and be there for that. And then, of course, if we need to backpack anything [sending home notices], I’ll have to make copies and backpack them out… Sending out emails. Reminders, reminders, reminders: make sure the kids have their money, because if they don’t bring their money, how are you going to sell? Then I have the school leadership team meeting every third Wednesday.

Nicole struggled to estimate her time commitment to the school but noted that on a busy week she spent nearly as many hours there as her son did.

We see in Nicole’s case that volunteerism provided some benefits for parents who are not members of the elite. Nicole’s involvement connected her to other parents and facilitated further civic engagement in the school and potentially in the district. However, there were limits to Nicole’s inclusion. Her volunteer commitment did not allow her to enter the elite circles that were being reproduced among the elite parents. When I asked what friendships she had formed through the PTA, she mentioned that she felt Nancy was a great friend. However, when I asked Nancy this same question, she did not say she counted Nicole as a friend. When I asked specifically about Nicole, Nancy said that Nicole is ‘a good person, but not someone I have much in common with’.

Fundraisers vs Friendraisers. The PTA’s emphasis on fundraising also helped ensure the reproduction of status hierarchies among the parents. ‘Fundraiser’ and ‘friendraiser’ were terms used by PTA leaders to designate the purpose of activities. Friendraisers had the primary purpose of fostering community. Even though those events included things like bake sales and coin drives that also focused on raising money, the income from friendraisers was not substantial enough for them to be considered fundraisers, which brought in much more revenue. Although members of the PTA leadership reported being concerned by the organisation’s lack of inclusivity, considerations of inclusivity and equity were sidelined for fundraisers. In my early days at Bricks, I met with Clara, the PTA vice president. Clara explained that the PTA leadership would let me observe them, but I could not attend the gala unless I purchased a $150 ticket. There were limited tickets, she explained, and the revenue from the event was crucial to the liquidity of the PTA. It was difficult to deny people the opportunity to attend, she said, but it was necessary.

The division between fundraisers and friendraisers produced a clear boundary between elite and non-elite parents and shaped their volunteer work in the PTA. Namely, the gala was just for the elite. Nicole, the ‘unicorn’ of the PTA, explained that the gala set the limits of her substantial participation. When asked in an interview what events she participates in, she replied, ‘everything, but not so much the gala cause I don’t have connections [laugh]’ ‘so they are covered with that… If you have connections, you should be on the gala’. The boundary extended to her attendance at the gala as well. ‘I went to the gala once’, Nicole said wistfully as we chatted one day. In her first year in the PTA leadership, a ‘gifted’ parent gave her a spare ticket she had purchased. Nicole had a great time and would love to go again, but the $150 cost of the ticket was beyond her. Every year she hoped someone would give her another ticket, but, apart from that first year, Nicole’s tireless efforts on behalf of the PTA and the school had never been recognised with a ticket to the gala.

Leadership. There were no other parents like Nicole in the PTA leadership because the emphasis on fundraising led parents with social, economic, and cultural capital to acquire and hold on to the positions in PTA leadership. It was widely acknowledged that there was a tremendous representation gap in the Bricks PTA. Many PTA leaders described efforts and planned efforts to encourage more involvement among GenEd parents. However, during PTA elections each year this research was ongoing multiple GenEd parents ran for PTA leadership positions but very few were elected.

Observing just one election match-up demonstrates the reality of elite integration in PTA leadership. On the day of the Spring 2015 election, approximately 90 parents were seated in the auditorium as candidates for PTA leadership stood before them. In the first four rows, centre, a group of about 30 parents, the existing networks of PTA leaders and their friends, sat closely together. Other parents were scattered throughout the auditorium, mainly sitting alone or in pairs.

When she was announced as a candidate for the entry-level member-at-large position, Victoria approached the microphone. She had been sitting alone at the side of the room. A Latinx woman in her late 60s, Victoria read a prepared statement, her eyes rarely rising from the paper:

My name is Victoria Gonzalez. I’m a mother of 3 and a grandmother of 7. I have 2 grandchildren that I have full custody of that are here at Bricks. I also have two kids who are 27 and 28 and they also graduated from Bricks, so that makes me a little familiar with Bricks. So, this year I am running for member at large. I know that some of you may probably be wondering why it took me so long to join the PTA. One answer would be that I had no time to come to any of the meetings let alone to join the PTA. I’ve worked so much and I have always had two, three a few or several jobs at a time. I lived around this neighbourhood for around 24–25 years. I’ve been involved in the community, and I am a fast learner. What I don’t know I will learn. I have more time now because I am retired. The time I have I can use to be helpful to the PTA…

Next up was Victoria’s competitor, Jamie. A white woman in her mid- or late 30s, Jamie had been sitting with the PTA group, front and centre. She rose, stood tall, spoke without notes, and mostly trained her eyes on the crowd at the front of the auditorium. She said, ‘I’m Jamie Mellan and I know most of you down front’. She smiled at the PTA leadership.

I am very committed to this school, and I want it to be as good as it could be. I have a first grader in this school and next year my middle son will be in kindergarten G&T [gifted and talented] as well. A bit about myself: I’m [in television] and I serve on the board of [an important organisation for people in the entertainment industry]. I also run a charity that works to bring the arts to children. I’ve been very active in the school. I try to fundraise for Teaching Assistants and think we should have full-time TAs for every class. Regardless of how things go today, I will be involved with the school. I will fundraise and I will be there for events.

Later, when I asked members of the PTA leadership why Victoria was not elected and Jamie was despite the lack of GenEd representation on the board, I received a variety of responses such as it being safer to choose the person you knew, differences in style of addressing the audience made Jamie look more like ‘leadership material’, and Jamie’s experience with fundraising and outside connections would be an asset to the organisation as it pursued its fundraising goals. When you plan to raise $450,000 with a team of volunteers, considerations of inclusivity only carry so much weight. In general, elite parents chose other elite parents for leadership roles.

Although they recognised their exclusion from the PTA elite, parent volunteers like Victoria and Nicole rarely complained. I asked Kayla, another very involved GenEd parent from a less privileged background, if she had ever been encouraged to run for a position on the board. She said she had not, but she didn’t mind. Because she did not know a lot about running an organisation; she thought it was best to stick to volunteering. Xenia, a GenEd parent who was elected to a leadership position when a space opened unexpectedly at the beginning of the school year, was not re-elected to the position the following year. When I asked her why she was not re-elected, she shrugged, ‘They have already told us our money isn’t good enough, so why should I be surprised if my work for the PTA wasn’t good enough?’

Conclusion

In recent decades, civil society scholars have noted the concentration of power and resources in select civil society organisations taking a ‘seat at the table’ with the state and the business sector in assessing and addressing societal needs (Johansson and Meeuwisse, Chap. 1, this volume). In this chapter, I have described a case of the integration of civil society elite—first through the concentration of influence and power in civil society organisations that benefit from the political and economic resources of their members, and second through the increased influence and power that members of the economic, social, and cultural elite gain when their volunteerism makes it possible to convert economic, social, and cultural capital into ‘do good’ capital (Dean, 2020).

The integration of civil society organisations into government is an outgrowth of policy changes. In the case of PTAs, shifting educational policy in the United States emphasised parental participation in schools. In New York City and New York State, this policy position was reinforced by local decisions that gave PTAs a central role in school funding and in assessments of school performance. PTAs, which had once been independent civil society organisations made up of parents and teachers, are now school-based conduits of elite parent’s labour, skills, and money into the school.

As a result, PTAs and other school-supporting civil society organisations supplant the democratic civic goals of volunteerism and public education, resulting in elite reproduction through volunteerism. Parents from the social, economic, and cultural elite use involvement in the PTA to convert their social, economic, and cultural resources into influence within the school. They leverage their influence to establish and maintain the reputation of the school, to access advantages for themselves and their children, and to build networks with other elite parents. The civil society elites of the PTA engage in exclusionary boundary processes that ensure that non-elite parents, even those who also take on volunteer work in the school, are not fully included in the circle of elite PTA parents. These developments centralise the power and influence of parents from the economic and cultural elite and supplant the PTAs’ stated purpose.