After thirty some years in teaching I feel qualified to state the obvious about parent volunteers. They are women. Occasionally, men will help out and I’m sure there are some that are reliable regulars somewhere but for the most part it is women doing the yeoman’s share of the work. I don’t think it is because fathers don’t care, I think it is that they think bigger. There is no way I could find even three men willing to sit at a table and count thousands of milk bottle tops and oddly enough, I tip my hat to them. One parent suggested to me that rather than being gender issue, it is a stay at home vs. out of house worker issue. I conceeded the point to him but mostly to be conciliatory.
At any rate, this father had what I considered to be an excellent idea to raise funds for the school. Based on the knowledge that our community is full of competent residents, services and expertise could be purchased instead of popcorn or cookies. One transaction could raise $100 and the purchaser could get computer repair or house cleaning instead of 37 carbohydrates and guilt. Rather than take months to collect bottle tops which if fact are corporate tactics to product push, why not tap the talents of people invested in the good of the school community?
While nickel and dime approaches to fund raising have a foot solidly in past tradition, costs and capabilities have escalated. The time it takes to bake, package, price, present, sell and total is just not efficient when you consider that one service transaction could reap much greater reward. I think we would see a lot more representation from parents if they could offer their services rather than spending time doing something requiring twice the work for half the reward. Sure, they could count bottle tops at home, but don’t. They could put cookies in plastic bags in their homes, but I haven’t heard of them doing that and the fact that they don’t doesn’t bother me one bit. I wouldn’t either. It just doesn‘t make good economic sense.
The fact that public schools have to do fundraising at all is sickening, when you think of where other public monies go, but as long as we do it, the government gets away with being dead beat parent to children all over the country. Public funding has not kept up with today’s costs of educating young people and if corporations are about education so much that they will hand out a nickel for a milk cap, free ice-cream for a good report card or a hamburger for a child who reads 30 books, why not drop the little dance and contribute to schools because they are good corporate citizens instead of clever corporate schemers.
Until pop top, bar code and bottle top counters refuse to bite, people will assume there is enough fund raising going on to provide everything needed for quality education but when the counting stops, the trickle stops and when the trickle stops people will see just how much need there is and then maybe politicians will have to address big issues in big ways. As long as fundraising is seen as necessary, then I say think big or stop completely.
