Men Shift the Dynamics of a Changing Organization Juan Brea, a PTA leader at P.S. 11 in Chelsea, with his daughters, Sadie, 5, and Chelsea, 8. AT Public School 11 in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan, the senior president of the Parent Teacher Association is a vivacious chatterbox who ascended the school's executive board the way many do: forging bonds with parents and teachers, doing an impressive stint as treasurer and finally being drafted for the top slot by a growing fan base. The one thing this executive officer did not do is man the cupcake table. "I'm not into the baking," said Juan Brea, an admission that once would have been unheard-of in the PTA. Mr. Brea, a 43-year-old who favors football, blue blazers, Polo cologne and chopping wood in his Catskills backyard on weekends, is part of the changing face of the PTA. What was once an easygoing volunteer group made up mostly of stay-at-home moms has begun to give way to male leadership. "This is like running a small business," said Mr. Brea, whose day job is chief operating officer at a small nonprofit. I'm an operations guy. I believe I add value. A 2009 study by the National Congress of Parents and Teachers and the National Center for Fathering, a nonprofit educational organization, found that 590 of 1,000 fathers surveyed nationwide said they attended school parent meetings. That is up from 470 out of 1,000 a decade earlier. And in many of the top-rated public schools across New York City, where parent groups have become ever-more-efficient fund-raising machines in the face of mounting budget cuts, fathers with financial expertise and a zest for leadership are not just going to those meetings, but running them. The shift reflects a number of underlying social trends: more women with demanding jobs, more men underemployed in a lingering recession, more shared parenting responsibilities over all and the professionalization of the PTA itself. In School District 2, which winds through some of Manhattan's priciest neighborhoods, at least 10 of the approximately 40 elementary and middle schools now have male parent-group leaders, up from just a couple 15 years ago. On Staten Island, the male firefighters, police and emergency-medical technicians who used to shy away from PTA meetings now call many of them to order. And in brownstone Brooklyn's District 15, PTA boards have been inundated with male leadership, in what officials say is a 15 percent jump from five years ago. For the most part, female PTA leaders applaud the injection of testosterone. But "both women and men would be lying if they were to say gender dynamics were not an issue," said Michelle Ciulla-Lipkin, a president of the PTA at P.S. 199 on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, where 5 of the 18 board members last year were male. At P.S. 110 on the Lower East Side, some have said that John Mooren, an investment banker whose platform as PTA president includes the ambitious goal of building a new gym, has been trying to corporatize the once laid-back board. "My response is: we need money," said Mr. Mooren, 58, whose sons are in kindergarten and first grade. In the cramped PTA room with the bright pink door at P.S. 75 on West End Avenue in Manhattan, Hector Rios, a co-president, said that being the lone man among eight board members has its downside: "Sometimes I feel like everybody's husband." And at P.S. 3 in the West Village, Nick Gottlieb (a PTA co-president and Papa Nick to students) said that years as a stay-at-home dad have not erased his own perception that he is occasionally an interloper in the land of bake sales, recess volunteers and pajama parties. "I have to make an extra effort not to be perceived as stepping on people," said Mr. Gottlieb, who has daughters in kindergarten and third grade. And I think that does have to do with being a man. A 1997 study by the National Center for Education Statistics, a federal agency, found that children whose fathers were involved in their schools were more likely to stay in school, do well and enjoy themselves while they were there.