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School Supplies/Fundraisers; Going Broke
Topic Started: Sep 13 2006, 09:43 AM (7,047 Views)
fyi
Principal
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But the most recent, and perhaps oddest, indication of the PTA's leftist leaning has been its membership in the "Fair Taxes for All Coalition"-a Who's Who of liberal groups including People for the American Way (PAW), the AFL-CIO, the Sierra Club, the NAACP and the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force. The coalition's main goal, as stated by PAW President Ralph Neas, was to oppose President Bush's tax-cut proposal.


:o Shocking!

Quote:
 
Kennedy also applauded the PTA for playing an "important role" in the confirmation of Clinton Surgeon General Joycelyn Elders. Elders-who described herself as the "condom queen" and kept a "condom tree" on her desk-was fired by Clinton after suggesting that masturbation be taught in schools.


:o
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fyi
Principal
Anna Krome
Sep 22 2006, 07:16 AM
These are children. Television "sells" them on cereal and toys--that's bad enough--but when our own schools are using class time to pitch children that they can win JUNK, if only they sell, sell, sell--it is wrong.

Children are impressionable and easily swayed by sales ptiches. Plus, "assemblies" are "fun" to kids. It is unfair to manipulate kids in this way...and parents, for that matter.

Most parents have no idea what their selling efforts and donations are going toward. They just trust that the PTA is "doing good for my school." Many would be upset to find out about the political motivations of their PTA.

An adult's motive to raise money for their own club should not be put unto the children.

Have a sales pitch after school. Believe me, the audience will not be as captivated.

And this has nothing to do w/"just keep your chin up--the world is a tough place." That's a silly thing to say.

AK

One of the incentives for the middle schoolers is a limo ride for pizza.
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ILIkeLI
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http://www.capitalresearch.org/pubs/pdf/x3765443936.pdf

National PTA’ s Liberal Politics Cost Parental Support
Parents Joining Independent Organizations That Care About Education, Not Politics
By Kathryn Jean Lopez
Summary: The PTA was one of the most successful voluntary associations in the United States. But it has become an unabashed advocate of liberal political causes that alienate many parents. As the PTA continues its political advocacy, parents in increasing numbers are abandoning the organization.

The PTA. It's so familiar-sounding.
It's as American as apple pie. But if you are like many Americans, the last time you thought about the PTA was to recall the lyrics of the "Harper Valley PTA" song.

If the PTA seems ever-present it's because so many schools have parentteacher groups that have adopted the "PTA" name. Look more carefully, though, and you'll find that many are unrelated to the official organization. Many parents don't even know there is such a thing as the National PTA.

But the National Congress of Parents and Teachers (it has a trademark on the names "National PTA" and "PTA") has more serious problems than clarifying the role of local chapters in its organizational structure. Critics and parents (often the same) say the PTA has become just another special-interest lobby, more interested in representing the teacher unions than in fulfilling the practical needs of our nation's schools. That's why PTA's membership rolls are on the decline and it faces a very uncertain future.

Politics and Demographics Threaten PTA
The PTA was once enormous. In the 1960s its membership reached an historic high of 12 million, and it still lays claim to being the fifth largest voluntary organization in the United States. But PTA officials now claim only 6.5 million members, and membership continues to fall rapidly. According to its own annual reports, the PTA lost some 450,000 members between 1993 and 1998.

Critics are even skeptical of the 6.5 million claim. Charlene K. Haar, president of the Education Policy Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank, writes in her new book, The Politics of the PTA, "If all [6.5 million] were parents, the PTA would enroll members from about 22 percent of all families with school-age children." She estimates that the figure is closer to 10 percent, putting PTA's membership at closer to 5.3 million. According to the PTA, there are some 26,000 local PTA affiliates in 118,276 U.S. elementary and secondary schools. (The PTA's own publications list varying numbers, from 21,849 to 26,000.) Haar thinks this too is an overestimation. She argues that the PTA's total doesn't take into account factors like discrepancies between the claimed membership provided by state chapters and actual dues collected and the double (or more) counting of parents with more than one child in different schools.

Why the sharp decline in PTA membership?
One reason is the changing demographics of the American family. Who has time for PTA meetings in households where both parents work or in single-parent households? Another possible reason is the changing nature of neighborhood communities, which today have so many more outlets around which to organize family activities. But a third reason is surely the PTA's liberal political agenda. The National PTA is preoccupied with political maneuvering that is of little interest to busy parents, and it advocates public policies on a host of issues that do not reflect parents' views.

Says Haar, "The National PTA is a figurehead organization that does not conduct itself in an open and straightforward manner, either with the public at large or with its members. Most members would be much more involved if the PTA were primarily interested in meeting the needs of members' children in their local schools. Instead, the National PTA devotes its energies to lobbying for welfare and educational legislation, and tries to persuade parents to do so too."

PTA officials are dismayed by their loss of membership, but give no indication that they are prepared to abandon their dedication to political advocacy or even moderate their agenda of big government solutions. Like the League of Women Voters, the PTA is a venerable organization that is oriented towards women and once expressed traditional civic concerns. But today's PTA is also like the League in its declining membership and concentration on liberal political advocacy. PTA's current ideological clamor may well prove to be the deathknell of this old American institution.

Organization
The PTA was called the National Congress of Mothers when Alice Birney organized it in 1897. Birney, a twice-widowed working mother, was its first president. Phoebe Hearst, mother of publisher William Randolph Hearst, was first vice president, and Mrs. Adlai Stevenson, wife of President Cleveland's vice president, was second vice president. The mothers met in Washington, D.C. "for the interchange of views, and the study of home problems which can be solved by woman alone."

In 1908 the group's name was changed to the National Congress of Mothers and Parent-Teacher Associations. By 1926, the PTA hit the million-member mark; it reached a peak of 12,131,318 members in the 1962-63 school year. Observes Haar, "If past as well as present members are counted, it may have enrolled over its lifetime more members than any other existing organization.

"Organized on national, state, and local levels, the stated mission of the PTA is:
To support and speak on behalf of children and youth in the schools, in the community and before governmental bodies and other organizations that make decisions affecting children…assist parents in developing the skills they need to raise and protect their children [and] encourage parent and public involvement in the public schools of this nation." The PTA then organizes its mission into objectives:
* "To promote the welfare of the children and youth in home, school, community, and place of worship";
* "To raise the standards of home life";
* "To secure adequate laws for the care and protection of children and youth";
* "To bring into closer relation the home and the school, that parents and teachers may cooperate intelligently in the education of children and youth";
* "To develop between educators and the general public such united efforts as will secure for all children and youth the highest advantages in physical, mental, social, and spiritual education."

Funny how only two of these objectives have anything to do with school.

PTA officials claim that about 89 percent of PTA member families had children public schools in 2000-2001, while about percent had children in private schools.
Parents and teachers of children in private schools are not formally prohibited from PTA membership, but membership is not encouraged. That's not surprising when you consider the PTA's opposition to school choice.

Local PTA chapters typically sponsor programs that are supposed to benefit their local public schools. (Exceptions include private kindergartens, Head Start programs, and preschools.) Chapters meet in local schools and have some legal and financial autonomy in choosing schoolsupport programs, but they also promote the National PTA's latest political message to parents. National PTA bylaws forbid using pupils to convey political messages, but it's not uncommon for teachers to sometimes resort to this practice, particularly when it comes to issues like vouchers, which have an impact on their jobs.

PTA individual member dues are low—between $5 and $10 annually—but even a declining mass membership can generate substantial sums for state affiliates, which receive $1.75 of each individual member's dues and from 50 cents to $5 from each local affiliate. Per capita dues are also the primary funding source for the National PTA; they generate 80 percent of the National PTA's annual revenue of $9 million (1999). The national office also receives revenue from investments, fees for training programs, policy conferences, convention exhibits, sale of merchandise, and government grants.

For instance, in fiscal year 1997-98, the PTA received a U.S. Department of Education Star School program grant for $30,000 and a $100,000 supplemental grant from the Centers for Disease Control for PTA affiliates' health programs. In 1995, the PTA entered into a long-term project (initially three years, then extended to six) with the Environmental Protection Agency to develop environmental awareness training workshops and other environmentaleducation tools; the EPA agreed to contribute $250,000 a year, 95 percent of the project's cost.

Additional investment income is generated by the 1996 sale of the PTA national headquarters building in Chicago to the government of Thailand for $3.1 million.
PTA's national office, still located in Chicago, employs about 56 fulltime staff. Four fulltime staff handle lobbying in the group's Washington, D.C. office.

The PTA was started by uppermiddle-class women who wanted to help women become good parents and teachers. But it has become something very different. Haar writes in The Politics of the PTA:
[size=1]From our perspective, at the beginning of the twenty-first century…the PTA is an anomaly.
It was founded upon an ideology that appeals less and less to upper-middle-class women, despite the social status of its early leaders and activities. The steep decline in birth rates among uppermiddle-class women, the huge increases in cohabitation and children born out of wedlock, the expansion of educational and occupational opportunities for women, and the declining prestige of homemaking suggest that the founding rationale for the PTA no longer holds much appeal for upper-middle-class mothers.
[/size]

The PTA, Haar suggests, "survived these dramatic social changes by gradually replacing its focus on motherhood with a welfare-state agenda."

Politics has given the PTA a renewed sense of purpose. But by abandoning a focus on direct services to parents and teachers of schoolchildren, the group has paid a heavy price. Observes Jennifer A. Marshall, a policy analyst at Empower America, a Washington, D.C. think thank:
"National PTA material can give the impression that school is almost an afterthought."


Foe of School Choice and Education Reform
The PTA did advocate public policies in its earlier years. It called for childlabor laws, urged that vaccination be made mandatory, and endorsed the federal school-lunch program. But more recently it has become the ideological twin of the National Education Association, the political powerhouse for public-school teacher interests.

Like the NEA, the PTA is all about liberal protest politics. It vehemently opposes school choice of any kind. "Vouchers usurp the will of the people and grant to a select few the right to determine how to spend our tax dollars," one PTA lobbyist recently argued in a "PTA Legislative Update."

Outside official circles, PTA attacks can be even more strident. In 1999 one local PTA in Rochester, Michigan distributed an inflammatory leaflet at North Hill Elementary School warning parents about proponents of the school-voucher movement. Its vitriolic description of the Nobel laureate who supports parental choice: "Milton Friedman is best known to the world as the former economics advisor to Augusto Pinochet, the fascist dictator of Chile."

Home schooling particularly arouses PTA ire. In 1987, when home schooling was in its infancy, the PTA adopted a resolution increasing education regulations to weaken the movement. And in 1990 the Iowa PTA opposed a state ballot initiative to legalize home schooling. One Iowa home-schooler complained to Organization Trends: "The PTA sees itself as the lay support arm of the great and holy Church of Education. There is one school, and the Director of the Department of Ed is its prophet…The PTA tolerates private and religious schools, which at least observe the forms of the great church (they have to be accredited in Iowa, unlike about half the states). Home schoolers come in for special wrath because we defy the church." Fortunately, the PTA failed; today more than 5,300 schoolchildren in Iowa are home schooled.

Charlene Haar notes that "inasmuch as home schooling is the ultimate in parental involvement, one might expect the PTA to be supportive of it, but this is not the case." The PTA's position seems to confirm its real goal: bolstering public schools despite the successes shown in recent years by alternative ways to educate children.

The National PTA focuses its heavyduty lobbying on Washington, D.C. In July
2002 Linda Moody, president of the Washington, D.C. PTA, testified against a bill sponsored by Rep. Dick Armey (R-TX) to provide scholarships so poor children in the nation's capital can attend private schools. Because Washington's public schools perform so poorly you might have hoped she would lend support for an attempt to help kids get a decent private education. But speaking on a witness panel that included a pro-school choice parent and someone from the anti-choice People for the American Way, Moody made her position clear: "The solution to failing schools should not be programs that encourage the abandonment of our public schools. Public policy should promote programs that fix the problems facing public schools. Vouchers do nothing to improve public schools."

The National PTA also signed onto a brief filed by the National School Boards Association that opposed Cleveland, Ohio's school-choice program. The brief, prepared for the U.S. Supreme Court, said in part: "Vouchers, particularly the Cleveland program, fail to offer meaningful choice, fail to improve student achievement for participating students, and fail to improve public education for nonparticipating students." Last June when the Court ruled in Zelman v. Simmons-Harris that Cleveland inner-city parents could use tax-funded vouchers to send their children to any public, private or parochial school, the National PTA "vowed" to keep fighting school choice. "Vouchers divert funds from public schools that are already inadequately funded," said National PTA president Shirley Igo. "We will continue to fight voucher programs and advocate for programs that improve education for all children." (For more information on the organizations allied with the PTA in opposing school choice, see the September
2002 issue of Organization Trends "What Next After the Education Voucher Victory?")

At least the PTA's opposition to school choice and home schooling demonstrates its stalwart defense of public schooling. More puzzling is its focus on issues having little or no relevance to education. National PTA recently encouraged a letter writing campaign of opposition to nuclear-waste storage at Yucca Mountain in Nevada. The California PTA has publicly supported abortion rights since 1972. The National PTA opposed the first Bush tax cut. Policy positions of this sort can best be understood as PTA efforts to remain in good standing with other political advocacy organizations.

What passes for liberal political activism is hardly the worst aspect of the PTA.
What's most disheartening is the PTA's neglect of parents. Haar tells Organization Trends, "Parents do not know what they are paying for. What parents get for their money is PTA's agenda, and that is often in opposition to what parents are hoping to accomplish for their child's education." A 1996 Wirthlin poll found that "an overwhelming majority—82 percent— are unaware of the organization's political and lobbying activities."

The Price of Political Advocacy: Declining Membership

PTA is losing members as parents realize that it's irrelevant to the education of their children. No doubt, many of the 450,000 people who disappeared from the PTA rolls between 1993 and 1998 simply failed to renew their membership. But others have joined independent parent-teacher organizations —called "PTOs"—that are springing up throughout the country.


At its 2001 national convention, the PTA director of public relations dismissed parents and teachers who support the new independent groups. Lobbying for a dues increase, she said, "We want people who are committed to this agenda, and if they're not, that's fine. Go be a PTO [an independent parent-teacher organization] and have a nice life."

In other words, if you can't hold on to your members, pretend you don't want them. Adds Haar, "This attitude signifies a departure from the National PTA's legacy of keeping dues very low to attract all parent groups." What today's PTA ignores or forgets is that most parents join school groups because of parochial concerns. They want to know what is taught in their school.
They want to be sure that their school has enough teachers and resources to educate their children. But clearly this is not PTA's "agenda." That gap between the interests of the National PTA and the interest of parents is responsible for the exodus of PTA members in recent years.

One mother in Broward County, Florida says she regrets becoming involved in her children's elementary school PTA. She reports: "I attended a leadership workshop one Saturday in September. If I hadn't been driving the car pool that day, I would have left after the first speech. They proceeded to inform us that we are not our mother's PTA. They said that their goal was to be the #1 Children's Advocacy Lobby. They told us that we were to get politically involved in every aspect of education. I attended a special workshop where they taught us how to go about contacting our lawmakers to pass the laws they supported. I am a conservative Republican and was so upset by the constant bashing of all Republicans, especially Jeb and George W. Bush. I vowed that after my term is finished, I would never pay my PTA dues again."

Another parent of a North Carolina magnet-school says she quit the PTA in frustration: "I could not accept that the only way to be a good parent was to toe the NEA political line. And what was that line?
It appeared to me to be: Democrats in office, delegation of authority to their certified experts, lots more money for schools and, while we were at it, a general tax-based redistribution of money."

The PTA also has taken strong stands on sex education that will not endear it to more conservative parents. It issued statements of support for Jocelyn Elders, the Clinton Administration's controversial surgeon general. (As Arkansas state health director she adorned her desk with a "condom tree.") And it supports guidelines issued by the Sex Information and Education Council of the United States (SIECUS), which call for comprehensive sexual education starting in kindergarten.

Faced with criticism, the PTA typically responds by calling names. It sees "right-wing extremists" and the "religious right" behind every bush. The National Education Association even paid to send several PTA members to attend a training conference sponsored by Americans United ( formerly called Americans United for Separation of Church and State). Its title: "Public Schools Under Assault: Why the Religious Right Must Lose!" (For more information on Americans United, see the December 2002 Organization Trends "Americans United for Separation of Church and State").

In 1999 the syndicated columnist Molly Ivins was invited to address the PTA's national convention. She ridiculed "right-wing" groups for supporting vouchers, privatization and competition in education; called the Christian Right "the most frightened people in America!" and alleged that it would limit freedoms. Ivins announced that "many home schoolers will permit their children to read only the Bible" and told the PTA gathering, "If ever there was any evidence that man is descended from monkeys, and damned recently too, it is Tom Delay!"

Still, PTA's knee-jerk liberalism is not the real problem, argues Tim Sullivan, president of PTO Today, Inc., a national service company that assists the formation of non-PTA parent-teacher organizations. Sullivan says parents are less troubled by some of the PTA's liberal views than by its insistence on making public policy advocacy the heart of its mission. Says Sullivan, "The fact that the PTA makes the political mission so prominent (not the particular views, but the emphasis on views in general) is a problematic misfit for more groups. Most of the involved parents I run across get involved for the connection to their child's school. They care passionately about making their local school a great place and they look for services to help them do that."

Instead of raising dues and lobbying for more federal school funding, the PTA should be made to answer for its support of failed legislative proposals like GOALS 2000. GOALS 2000 was an education plan developed by the first Bush Administration and pushed by President Clinton. It was yet another unimaginative proposal to increase spending and undermine local control without reforming failing public schools. This PTA-backed legislation failed to do what the PTA promised— improve school performance and increase parental involvement in public schools.

In 1995, then-Virginia governor George Allen explained that GOALS 2000 money was "equivalent to less than a penny per day per student. Avoiding participation in the program would be a small price to pay to safeguard the principle of local control of public education." But the PTA took the position that even a small increase in federal money would make a big difference in poor school districts.
In her book Haar describes the PTA's aversion to private and voluntary action.
n its entire history, the PTA has always promoted government over private solutions to social problems.
Indeed, it does not appear that the PTA's leadership has considered the possibility that government programs may have different dynamics and outcomes than do private efforts to solve the same problems…Virtually every PTA activity that started out as a private charitable activity has led to a government program that supposedly obviates the need for private action.

Minority Outreach: Will It Boost Membership?

Even while parents are opting out of local PTA groups, many local PTA groups are themselves seceding from the national organization to form PTOs. Because they are independent from any state or national organization, membership numbers are hard to pin down. But PTO Today head Tim Sullivan estimates there are about
46,000 PTOs in the U.S.

PTA's declining membership has led it to initiate new outreach programs, especially to minority groups. The National PTA is currently targeting Hispanic parents in Texas, Florida, and California. (A recent survey found only three percent of PTA respondents identify themselves as Hispanic.) The $250,000 outreach campaign has as its slogan: "Los buenos padres no nacen, se hacen" (Good parents are not born, but made.) The National PTA is eager to provide translators at meetings and promote bilingual literature, and it has been an active opponent of English-language initiatives like California's "English for the Children," a project sponsored by businessman Ron Unz. National PTA plans to take the Hispanic-recruitment program nationwide in 2004 if it proves successful in Texas, Florida, and California.

According to National PTA publicrelations representative Jennifer Gaster Sopko, "National PTA has also identified Hispanic leaders/mentors in each of the pilot areas and will be bringing them together with protégés in each of their respective states—there will be 15 mentors to 30 protégés. The next step includes the mentors and protégés traveling to Chicago for a leadership and development training —then returning to their states to develop a plan for increasing Hispanic membership in PTA."

PTA: Not Reformable?

It seems unlikely that the PTA can woo enough minorities to halt its membership slide. Nor is the PTA likely to abandon liberal advocacy or support school choice.
Once co-opted by the Left, the PTA will stay Left.

The fact is the National PTA has been set up to be a legislative lobby for politicians, bureaucrats and unions, not parents. Notes Harr, "Reforming the PTA to become more responsive to parent needs would require making basic changes in the National PTA, especially its governance structure and its neutrality with regard to collective bargaining issues…Perhaps the National PTA is an organization that has outlived its usefulness and should be left to wither away."

That would be a boon to education reform. American parents need organizations that will trust and help them. They don't need organizations to administer political litmus tests they must pass to prove their worthiness as parents.
Kathryn Jean Lopez is editor of National Review Online.
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Hullparent
Principal
Since Livonia is so intent on being like Novi it may interest you that last year Novi schools sent a note to parents requesting 40$ to cover their needs instead of doing any fundraising.

The thing that really burns me is using school time to hold assemblies regarding fundraising - do the Michigan schools figure this time into the alloted minutes of teaching per year?
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PO'D Resident
Principal
I have never heard of an assembly being held at school to promote a general fund-raiser. The only all-school fund-raiser we've ever done that involves "junky" prizes is Jump Rope for Heart. I agree that the prizes are junk and that they get the kids all excited about winning them.

The kids will occasionally come home with cookie dough order forms or pizza kits, but nothing that involves taking the kids out of class to get them hyped up about it.

If you have a concern about the fund-raisers your school is doing, then speak to the principal as I don't think this is a district-wide practice.

I also agree with the other posters--if you don't want to participate in the fund-raisers, then don't. If you're concerned about where the PTA money is being spent, then attend a meeting. They usually pass out and discuss their budget and expenditures at every meeting.

Muffins for teachers, supplies for the school, or Family Fun Night activities are all designed to benefit our children and teachers, and to bring us together as a community. Why must we be so critical of everything?
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fyi
Principal
PO'D Resident
Sep 22 2006, 09:02 AM
I have never heard of an assembly being held at school to promote a general fund-raiser. The only all-school fund-raiser we've ever done that involves "junky" prizes is Jump Rope for Heart. I agree that the prizes are junk and that they get the kids all excited about winning them.

The kids will occasionally come home with cookie dough order forms or pizza kits, but nothing that involves taking the kids out of class to get them hyped up about it.

If you have a concern about the fund-raisers your school is doing, then speak to the principal as I don't think this is a district-wide practice.

I also agree with the other posters--if you don't want to participate in the fund-raisers, then don't. If you're concerned about where the PTA money is being spent, then attend a meeting. They usually pass out and discuss their budget and expenditures at every meeting.

Muffins for teachers, supplies for the school, or Family Fun Night activities are all designed to benefit our children and teachers, and to bring us together as a community. Why must we be so critical of everything?

They have assemblies @ our school for the fundraisers.
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Momforone
Principal
Hullparent
Sep 22 2006, 08:36 AM
Since Livonia is so intent on being like Novi it may interest you that last year Novi schools sent a note to parents requesting 40$ to cover their needs instead of doing any fundraising.

The thing that really burns me is using school time to hold assemblies regarding fundraising - do the Michigan schools figure this time into the alloted minutes of teaching per year?

That's what we did @ Taylor for the past two years. I think it was a 45.00 per student donation to the PTA(if you could afford it). We also did pizza kits. It worked for me. Then I didn't have to feel guilty about not purchasing over priced junk. Hoover has Market Day. A lot of processed foods which we can't eat @ our house. Sorry.
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JoJo
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fyi
Sep 22 2006, 09:08 AM
PO'D Resident
Sep 22 2006, 09:02 AM
I have never heard of an assembly being held at school to promote a general fund-raiser.  The only all-school fund-raiser we've ever done that involves "junky" prizes is Jump Rope for Heart.  I agree that the prizes are junk and that they get the kids all excited about winning them.

The kids will occasionally come home with cookie dough order forms or pizza kits, but nothing that involves taking the kids out of class to get them hyped up about it.

If you have a concern about the fund-raisers your school is doing, then speak to the principal as I don't think this is a district-wide practice. 

I also agree with the other posters--if you don't want to participate in the fund-raisers, then don't.  If you're concerned about where the PTA money is being spent, then attend a meeting.  They usually pass out and discuss their budget and expenditures at every meeting. 

Muffins for teachers, supplies for the school, or Family Fun Night activities are all designed to benefit our children and teachers, and to bring us together as a community. Why must we be so critical of everything?

They have assemblies @ our school for the fundraisers.

Ours Too!!
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NFarquharson
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Principal
My daughter must have just been to one at Coolidge. She came home talking about selling enough stuff to get either

1. a security camera to keep her brother out of her room, :D or
2. $500 for college (something must have been lost in the translation :blink: )

She brought the Frankenmuth materials home that day. She's not sure which one would be better. :lol:
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livoniamom
Principal
Anna Krome
Sep 22 2006, 07:16 AM
These are children. Television "sells" them on cereal and toys--that's bad enough--but when our own schools are using class time to pitch children that they can win JUNK, if only they sell, sell, sell--it is wrong.

Children are impressionable and easily swayed by sales ptiches. Plus, "assemblies" are "fun" to kids. It is unfair to manipulate kids in this way...and parents, for that matter.

Most parents have no idea what their selling efforts and donations are going toward. They just trust that the PTA is "doing good for my school." Many would be upset to find out about the political motivations of their PTA.

An adult's motive to raise money for their own club should not be put unto the children.

Have a sales pitch after school. Believe me, the audience will not be as captivated.

And this has nothing to do w/"just keep your chin up--the world is a tough place." That's a silly thing to say.

AK

I agree with you. PTA is fine with me but the assembly to promote prizes and selling is just totally wrong and the principal should never have allowed it.

Put the info in the backpack and let the parent decide what to do with it.

PS: I also had my kid beg to buy at least "one thing" so she could get a pencil. What a joke!
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Anna Krome
Principal
Thanks for your post, but the "just don't buy mentality" misses the point.

ALL kids are exposed to the sell stunt at our school.

Selling stuff for an adult club should not be our kids' problem, and they should not be manipulated w/the promise of prizes.


AK
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ktmom
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Principal
Anna Krome
Sep 22 2006, 06:39 PM
Thanks for your post, but the "just don't buy mentality" misses the point.

ALL kids are exposed to the sell stunt at our school.

Selling stuff for an adult club should not be our kids' problem, and they should not be manipulated w/the promise of prizes.


AK

I think your point is you don't like anything PTA does or stands for.

We get that. Again, you don't have to participate. No one keeps track of who participates and who does not. All kids benefit from the money PTA raises whether they fundraise or not.

If you question what the fundraising money goes to attend a meeting and ask. Where you at the meeting when the budget was presented?

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Delynn
Principal
I have to side with AK on this one....I resent having my child railroaded into a gym to listen to some sales pitch. The purpose of the school is to teach, not raise funds for whatever event or project pleases the PTA. If those that are interested choose to have attend either before or after school, great! Don't waste class time and resources. (Don't we have a meap to study for!)

And worst of all, don't dangle a piece of dollar store garbage in front of the kids. Whatever side of the fence you are on...it is manipulative and wrong.

Besides, my kid is losing enough class time to the transportation department, thank you very much.

By the way.....I support the schools....Not the PTA.
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Delynn
Principal
I am not sure if this is the proper thread to ask this question on, but my son is a former Hull student. He loves to read. Hull had a fairly well stocked library....On the initial Kennedy Open House, I took particular note of the library. Seemed smaller than Hull's, but still relatively good sized. Now that all the kids are back, and school is in session, I would think that all the library materials would be available to the kids. On the night of the Open House, we walked through the library, and it didn't look any different than it did before the move.....

Is it just me, or could someone tell me what happened to the books?
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Grant1
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We have just begun to fight!
Good question...would be a good one to pose at the next board meeting

What has happened to all of the books from the closed libraries?
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