Fund Ranting

I have four children attending three different public schools. Each one of the schools is trying to get my children to raise money for the schools. It's the end of October and I'm heartily sick of the whole thing. Now I don't begrudge what the PTA does with the funds, one of the schools got a badly needed copier and each teacher is given money to spend however they wish for the classroom, I just hate how they get the funds.

The absolute worst is the first one they hit the students with at the start of the school year. The students are rounded up for a pep rally and are issued a folder with a catalog from one of the various fund raising organizations. The students are urged to sell as much as possible with little prizes given out at each sales level. Of course we are "not supposed to go door to door and are only to sell to those that you know and trust."

Yeah right, so who are we to sell to. I can't tap other Mom friends, because they have the same problem. Larry certainly can't drag it into work, especially with four kids worth of sales. Our extended families are multiple states away and there is no way I'm going to hit up the grandparents every time one of their grandchildren has to hawk goods. So we end up buying the stuff ourselves, which peeves me because there is precious little that interests me in the catalogs. If we're lucky there may be a whole page dedicated to Hanukkah, otherwise they are generally 60 % Christmas stuff and the rest is miscellaneous high priced junk. The past couple of years the folder has gone straight to the recycling bin.

But this year the middle school knocked it up to a whole new level of evil. Instead of cheesy prizes there was going to be a party. In order to just attend the party (held during normal school hours- which irked me to no end) each child had to sell a minimum of eight items. Successive sales levels included special bonus rides and the top level was a limo ride. So in order to prevent my child from feeling like a total social outcast we had to sell/buy eight things.

This was outright black mail.

I was furious and vented my spleen to other mothers and Meryl and they all agreed it was so very wrong. In the end I scoured the catalog for the cheapest items and sent in the check. Middle school is tough enough as is, and I don't want to make it any harder. The worst moment was when the folder first showed up, Jake knows how I feel about this stuff and said "I guess I'll just spend my time in study hall." (Just twist the knife in a little further please.)

Interestingly enough there was been no PTA meeting yet for the middle school. When it does happen, I planning on standing up and giving them my two cents. I could write a letter and complain directly to the fund raising chair, but I want my grievance publicly aired and I know I'm not alone.

Meanwhile, anybody want an Entertainment book?