school volunteering

[houseelf]

This is a segway from the both fundraiser and room parent threads and basically expresses the same or a similar frustration, or is at least deeply overlapping, but it deserves its own discussion.

Not going to lie, this post is part rant, part hypothetical question, and verges on political, so you've been warned. It's just something I have observed for awhile and it doesn't sit well with me.

In addition to the extracurricular funds you are politely asked to cough up for candles, chocolates, and crap, crap, crap, what kind of "volunteering" does your school expect? I'm flabbergasted by both the amount of additional $ and man hours parents provide in this district. We live in the district with highest property in our city. (As a reference, it exceeds property taxes of similar high rent districts in Atlanta and Denver.. seriously obnoxious!) In addition, the PSA raises tens of thousands of dollars and the parents who run it are professional/executive types. Lacrosse? Funded by its own NFP set up by parents who wanted to bring the sport to the district. There is a music association that fund major expenditures like bass, xylophones, and grants to take trips to Disney and NYC. There are the sports boosters that raise serious cash. My daughter's second grade class had at least one parent volunteer every.single.day. Of course those kids can read, they have several adults in there coaching them every day. Similarly I coach girls on the run after school. I have 6 co-coaches for 14 girls. Yeah. Parents and high school teens offer free homework help every day after school. There are fundraisers. campaigns, solicitations for parent volunteers at least weekly. The dual professional households send their nannies once the kids get in school. Obviously, the kids here benefit immensely, but at what point does this become absurd? Overkill? Not to mention the whole fairness/social justice issue which is a debate for another day.

To be clear, I love my hometown and my kids are doing well. It just seems like ...overkill. Quite frankly, I want an accounting for all that $ and time. Meanwhile 4 miles from here there is a school with 99% subsidized lunches, no dedicated art or gym teachers, and no teaching assistants. Whenever the clipboard gets passed to volunteer, I do not sign my name. (Yeah, I didn't make the cut for cool kid table of moms. LOL). I do volunteer as a court appointed special advocate for foster kids downtown. In many ways, I almost feel like the well intentioned adults here need to take a half a step back and let the kids figure things out... or even...do without. (gasp).

I guarantee you my parents neither volunteered at this level nor were expected. How did we get to this place?

[MrsK]

Gosh, I read that and couldn't help but think how wonderful it is that your community is so invested in educating it's children. The village has stepped up.

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[Phoebe]

I think it is better to be on overkill, than have a lack of parental involvement when needed. When the school staff feel supported it is a winning situation for the students. There is a time and place for parental time, effort and money. That being said, volunteering in our old school was a social scene and a contest for some of the parents. One parent in particular was there way too much in different capacities like subbing, PTO pres and generally unable to cut the apron strings from her kids. Her mother even hung out there a lot. The students definitely noticed and thought it was weird. Since Sandy Hook, our old school started to limit the volunteers and number of parents who could attend class parties. Six co-coaches for 14 girls? Get a life!

[Vanquisher]

Our school definitely has a lot of volunteers, but nothing like that. Not even close. Wow. I do think that is overkill, but it's not something that's really wrong. Lots of charitable things are poorly allocated. Some charities get more time, money, and attention (Susan G. Komen?) and some get cobwebs and crickets even though they may be very worthy causes. You can't win every battle. A little overkill is no big deal in this arena.

[Ladybug]

Wow. That's incredible. I can see what you mean about the kids getting the impression that life revolves around them. Are their any community service clubs? Can you start one?

[ladymoreta]

That does seem like overkill. Could you suggest sending a group of parent volunteers to the other school? Maybe even send some kids, too? When I was in high school, we had a program where we went to an inner city elementary school and helped with their after school care. It was a great experience for us and the kids.

[Pollyanna]

DD5 kinder class would have had 8, yes 8, room moms. That is a room mom for each 3 kids. I suggested that maybe the teacher could put the names in a hat and draw our three. You'd have thought I suggested something horrific. Its not just that the moms want to be involved, they want the title too. For some (note the word: some) it is kind of a weird social climbing thing or a way to feel important IMO. I've been in classes where there was WAY too much involvement and the parties had more food and activities than any kid could even handle and in classes where the party was a few treats and then fun time outside. The kids always preferred less to more.

[spotty_dog]

Our PTA is about to fold because it is so poorly attended. Same with our soccer club, which scrambles every season to find enough volunteer coaches just to run through a prescribed set of drills with the 5-7 set. We have 40% free and reduced lunch, most of our special services are funded through Title I, and we have a decent-sized military population which means a lot of single parenting going on during deployments. The only aides in the classrooms are IEP-mandated, and class sizes are mostly in the 16-26 range. I have never heard of "room moms" in this district.

But somehow, through all that, my kids' classes have always fielded a daily parent volunteer. Sometimes more than one a day for kindergarten. These volunteers run copies so the teachers don't have to come in on the weekend, they work with small groups of children so fewer kids fall through the gaps during larger group instruction. And frankly, I think this is the kind of parental involvement that makes a difference. These aren't jet-setting executives. They're parents who work multiple jobs or who are staying home with firefighter spouses or construction spouses. But they see the need in the classroom. They maybe can't commit in the evenings when they'd need childcare or when it'd take them away from their family time, and they certainly can't scrape enough out of the budget to open their wallets at every need, but they can give an hour while the kids are in school, demonstrating with their actions that school matters to their family. So yeah, I volunteer. Working with kids happens to be my skillset, and this happens to be the best way I know to utilize it for the greater good.

The PTA requests that members spend an hour, during the whole school year, assisting at events or volunteering in the school. So I guess that's the "expectation". Like I said, they're about to fold. They almost didn't have enough members to staff a board of directors this year, and to take the stress off the need to fundraise (which is the only way our classrooms get to go on field trips, but the same 2-3 people keep running the damned fundraisers and are overworked) they've decided to emphasize community-building this year and just hope for something else to take up the slack for fundraising.

[metroguy]

hm.. there's always going to be a big contrast with a have and have not school. take for example--my kid - goes to a 'good' public elementary school vs some other kid who goes a not sure good elementary school (2 blocks away) in the same system. the good school pta raise hundreds of thousand per yr to supplement the school budget. the not so good - i don't know but i bet it's low. the parents are involve on the good school. a few parents donated time/$$ to help the kids (reading, school projects). expectation are very high on the parents to donate a few thousand per yr per kid. i'm not sure if it makes much of difference on the performance of the kids. however i do know the parents make a big difference. involved parents usually means advance kids.

[alison]

Dd's in a private school, and there are no expectations to volunteer. at all. No school supply lists for all grades (they supply everything), and no communal Kleenex boxes that parents have to provide. Each class gets an allowance for parties (parents can help with the parties if they want, but aren't expected to). For field trips, they never have trouble finding chaperones. I dunno, I never felt pressured into going along... Since there were two teachers driving as well, they only needed 2-3 more parent volunteers.

Parents do individual Christmas and end of the year gifts.

The one thing that we did as a group effort was Teacher Appreciation Day. Each kid brings in a flower and one of the parents turned it into a bouquet for the teacher!

Dd hates her school, but I do love the low/no pressure attitude of parent involvement.

[spotty_dog]

and no communal Kleenex boxes that parents have to provide.

LOL. DD's kindy teacher gave me a good-natured hard time because the Kleenex I brought was 170 ct, not 175 ct as stipulated on the List. I assured her that she needed only say the word and I WOULD bring her more Kleenex to meet the shortfall!

[alison]

At Target, I was thumbing through the school supply lists, and they're ridiculous, if you ask me. It used to be something like 10 items long, and now they're 4 pages each. And they specify which freaking type of hole puncher the kids need to have. Buy one for the class and tie it to a table??

And then what?--the following year, the next teacher wants your kids to have a different kind of hole puncher???

[Pollyanna]

At Target, I was thumbing through the school supply lists, and they're ridiculous, if you ask me. It used to be something like 10 items long, and now they're 4 pages each. And they specify which freaking type of hole puncher the kids need to have. Buy one for the class and tie it to a table??

And then what?--the following year, the next teacher wants your kids to have a different kind of hole puncher???

Yes, the lists are so very stupid and so very expensive, they never ask for the bargain priced items.

[spotty_dog]

At Target, I was thumbing through the school supply lists, and they're ridiculous, if you ask me. It used to be something like 10 items long, and now they're 4 pages each. And they specify which freaking type of hole puncher the kids need to have. Buy one for the class and tie it to a table??

And then what?--the following year, the next teacher wants your kids to have a different kind of hole puncher???

Up-side of being in a Title I school, they try to ask for the minimum. I think I spent $80 on my two kids, not including backpacks. Although that was after re-using several things that weren't actually needed last year (slightly annoying). And it was really dumb for me to spend $8 on earbuds for DS -- we have so many damned headphones rolling around this house. Oh, well.

[Vanquisher]

At Target, I was thumbing through the school supply lists, and they're ridiculous, if you ask me. It used to be something like 10 items long, and now they're 4 pages each. And they specify which freaking type of hole puncher the kids need to have. Buy one for the class and tie it to a table??

And then what?--the following year, the next teacher wants your kids to have a different kind of hole puncher???

Yes. They do want a different type next year. Or, worse, a different color of the same type. It's beyond ridiculous. 4 chisel-tip expo dry erase markers, black. 5" blunt-tip Fiskars scissors. 5 composition notebooks, Mead, in black, red, green, blue, and magenta (NOT PURPLE!!!). 72 Ticonderoga #2 pencils, sharpened. I mean, these are examples from our page-long lists. Notebooks with prongs. Notebooks without prongs. With pockets. Without pockets. With holes. Without holes. Hundreds of bucks. Stupid.