Saw this yesterday and with several comments regarding this issue in a previous blog post, I thought it was timely to continue the conversation.
Texas Mom Shares One-of-a-Kind PTA Fundraising Letter
http://abcnews.go.com/Lifestyle/texas-mom-shares-kind-pta-fundraising-letter/story?id=33381268
Also, as Miss Whit stated, the Observer has posted its annual bullshit article about the "discrepancy" of the have and have-not schools, once again deflecting from the real issue.
The real issue in which Andrew Dunn hits the nail on the head in the first paragraph of the article: INVOLVED PARENTS:
Schools in Charlotte’s affluent areas routinely raise hundreds of thousands of dollars each year from involved parents. About two dozen of the city’s schools, most of them low-income, don’t even have a PTA.
You can read the annual woe is me PTA article here in the Observer:
http://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/local/education/article32654250.html
The comments to this article are comical, with the usual liberal suspects regurgitating the same status quo bullshit that usually follows stories such as this. Sheeeeeee's baaaack..... bet ya can't guess who it is.
Love it! Wish I had come up with this.
ReplyDeleteDirect donations are best since fundraising companies typically pocket 40% of profits.
Good for this school.
Great letter. This is EXACTLY how I feel about PTA/O fundraisers.
ReplyDeleteExpecially those "-thon" events where a bunch of rah-rah cheerleader types come out and take half the earnings of the Stupidthon.
I let my kid participate ONCE in one of those things, saw what it was, read up on it a bit and said NEVER AGAIN.
If they want money, ask, and we'll send a check. We also sent in supplies above and beyond whatever was requested.
Oh, and we also make sure our kids study and behave. Which everyone SHOULD do, but many don't.
The sad thing about one of our school's PTO's (NOT PTA, because that is apparently some trademarked organization name, believe it or not...).
ReplyDeleteThe morons who initially founded our school's PTO actually FORGOT to file for the IRS 501-whatever status they should have (sorry, no time to look that up).
So, we went to a few meetings to see what was happening, and about our second meeting, this bombshell was dropped.
Basically, they said that just about every dollar (and then some) which was raised that year was owed in BACK TAXES!
Wow. Buzz-kill for sure.
I'm not sure how that all worked out because that was the year before we decided to move to HK. I suspect they got a tax guru to file the papers and get them the exemption they should have gotten earlier, but still...
Here, they just ask us to send in a check for $HK500 (about $65) to be PTA/O members.
Then they usually hold a few fundraisers, but keep it to a minimum and not have "events" every time we turn around.
But we have some rather wealthy people going to our school.
One family donated around US$5000 to have their kid be the first kid to jump into the new pool the school had built last year. Of course, the whole class got to join in afterwards, so it's not like he swam alone...
But, as I said, there are some very wealthy people (many from mainland China) who send their kids to the private English-speaking schools in Hong Kong.
And our school is NOWHERE near the most expensive and "elite"...
I got that backwards. Fundraising companies typically keep 60% of profits. What a rip-off.
ReplyDeleteFun Run anyone?
Definitely not. Hated those things. Again, I'd much rather send in a check without all the hoopla and WASTED school time.
ReplyDeleteSeriously. I wonder just how much time is wasted on these kinds of activities in schools.
I can remember going to school for YEARS without having to "raise" money.
Of course, we didn't have air conditioning, smart boards, free lunches, etc., etc. back in those days.
Just a blackboard, chalk, erasers and desks bolted to a wooden floor.
Hell, we were even lucky to have individual urinals.
Didn't see THOSE until high school.
I remember peeing in a trough when I was in elementary school.
And it was a wooden schoolhouse, not all that fancy brick and large windows.
How did we ever survive and learn those 3R's?
Oh, yeah, we behaved, studied, and listened to the teacher...
And we didn't need "hip-hop" music to keep us awake, either.
Something that I suspect EVERY "Fun Run" blasts out at the highest decibels the law allows in order to get everyone "pumped" and hyper.
Which is exactly what most kids really need.