This is my first year with a child in school. We decided for us it is important for our kids to go to parochial schools. That we would sacrifice if need be to make it happen. But, I had no idea how much money they would be asking. Tuition I think is high over $2,000 a year for half day preschool. Now I am in an area where the majority of the parents can afford it and are very involved in the school. We are put on a volunteer schedule, and there is a parents in the classroom volunteering 3 out of 5 days of the week. We also have to do at least 3 hour of volunteer work per child in addition per year. Which most do more. The school it seems is pretty much ran by parents. Now this makes for a very nice school. Where everyone knows each other and so forth. BUT, we are one of the handful of families it seems that can't afford to give money every week, and I don't have a sitter for my youngest child so that I can be there volunteering all the time. Which I wish I could.

Our school also uses the kids to a degree. But, they pretty much are certain all parents are going to shell out the cash so they don't think twice. We also had a runathon, and they wanted names to mail out money requests from family and friends, wrapping paper sales, market day, etc. Every week it's something They will say if all students participate they will have a icecream party or all who sell a certain amount will get a toy. So I feel if I don't, mine will be the one feeling left out. What to do? And if I say something being in the minority will I be shunned for the next 9yrs my kids are at this school. It is a lot of pressure.

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"Before I was a Mom I didn't know the feeling of having my heart outside my body." ~Anonymous

If it were me...I'd do the bare minimum so my kids could participate in the fundraisers where the class is given an award so my child wouldn't be left out. If I couldn't do that, or if I didn't want to for any reason, I would talk to the teacher about it, go to your PTO/PTA meetings, find out what the deal is etc Fundraisers are important to a lot of smaller schools though because they often are trying to keep tuition costs down. Other fundraisers that don't involve the kids receiving an award, just ignore them!

I wouldn't worry about being 'shunned' though if you speak up. That seems a bit dramatic...do you really think that would happen? I'm really involved in my kids schools and always have been. I never thought anything bad about folks that didn't want to participate in fundraisers!

Thankfully, ds's school only does the auction and the book fair, both of which we always go to. Yes you can purchase Spiritwear but it's never shoved down our throat; same with the Annual Fund, they suggest $500 as a contribution yearly. Last year I meant to but this year things are different financially and we can't. But some other year we'll make it up.

We do pay tuition however, but I have to say ds's school is GREAT about not asking us for extra money. We are not allowed to take up a collection for a gift for the teachers either - you can give on your own if you desire but you are never asked for a contribution.

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I used to teach before I had kids. I worked in 2 different public schools in PA.

I've never heard of many of the things that you're posting about. I've never heard of a supplies fee. Glue, pencils, folders, paper, tissues, crayons, etc were always provided by the school. In the upper grades they're asked to get a 3-ring notebook, but that's about it.

We were also never allowed to send home notes asking for money. If we were having a party, we could send home notes asking for food, but that's it. Most of the time, I had to send notes home telling the parents thanks for offering, but we've already gotten enough. Otherwise we would have had to have several parties to use all of the food up.

Our school/PTO also paid for all field trips. We were allowed to go on one per year. I remember going to the Philadelphia Zoo, Whitticker children's museum and Washington DC (so they weren't lame field trips either).

As far as snacks, when I taught in the younger grades they had the option of either sending a snack in with their child each day (if their child wanted a snack) or sending in a box of something each month to share with the class.

We were allowed to have 2 school wide fundraisers a year. It was usually some overpriced candy and magazines. That was in addition to the book fair (all of the money from that went to the library to buy books and technology equipment).

There are not notes going home about yearly contributions either.

If I were in a school that was sending home notes all of the time asking for money, doing fund raisers all of the time and making my child pay for supplies and field trips - I would want to know where all of the tax dollars are going. It seems that either schools vary widely state by state or the schools aren't using their money wisely.

JMO!

I know exactly where my tax dollars are going. I live in a large city and my school system is primarily inner city with a few tiny pockets of little gems sprinkled around the city. My child is in one of those little gems and we pay a lot of money in taxes just because we live in this district. Our school system is B-A-D and that is just the way it is. Atlanta is full of minorities and the schools are packed until they are nearly bursting. Our graduation rate is something pathetic like 54%. So they throw crazy amounts of money around every year trying to educate the masses in the system, yet they just can't get the job done. Nearly everyone I know is forced to go private by high school to get a decent education with no riff raff for their children. And it is expensive! So our school is run by the parents. Okay, city of Atlanta, you are going to budget $5 per child per YEAR for art supplies? Fine. We will hire an art teacher and pay her ourselves and do it right. You are going to give us $1 per child for library costs? Fine. We will buy the books ourselves. See my point? We just get it done because it needs to be done and we all choose to live in this big city and there are tradeoffs. If we don't want to pay huge private school tuition, we will contribute to make our school what it needs to be.

My kids aren't school age yet, but I am a teacher and I see how much schools/PTA's ask from parents here is an example for one year

fall pictures, fall fundraiser, PTA sign up dues, School shirts, fall field trip, book fair, holiday boutique, Thanksgiving food drive, Secret Santa to needy families, math a thon, book clubs, spring pictures, spring field trip, PTA fundraiser, and that is just off the top of my head.

My school is in a working class low income area. I feel for these parents especially when they have more than 1 child to buy for.

I am vice president of our PTO. We are in the process of revamping it. We had a meeting last week and are changing a lot on how we run and what we purchase. We are hearing a lot of people complaining of all the fundraisers. A few people would like to spend $20,000 on books for k-8th grade. I myself along with a few others feel that is something the school should buy. The school says they don't have the money. Our kids have lost our music and art program because of lack of funding. So last meeting we decided to put our money towards things the kids can't learn from a textbook. We want help bring back the arts.

We do have yearbooks for the elementary but we only charge $5. Just covers our ink and paper. We make them ourselves.

Here is a list of things our PTO buys or has purchased in the past.
$200 for each teacher at the beginning of the year for supplies(every year we do this)
playground equipment
a bathroom vanity that needed replacing in one of the classrooms
computers and printers
lockers for the kids
gym equipment
copy machine
we supply a paper closet(paper plates, napkins, etc)
we supply a science closet
Library books
we pay for a theater group to come and perform a play for the kids
we put on an outside fun day in May for the kids
This is just to name a few. We just gave the teachers another $180 to use on what they needed in the classroom. We have never turned down a teachers request for anything.

But here is another way your school can earn money with your help and doesn't take anything but a little time.

Spartan UPC codes- I send in bundles of 1000 and they send a $20 check
Box tops-They will give 10 cents for each box top up to $20,000 a year and Campbell's soup labels.
These really do add up and help so much. You will be surprised on how many people are willing to save these for the schools. Especially the grandmas.

Just thougth of one more. We also pay for the milk for snack time in the youger grades because the school wants 50 cents for a small cartoon and we thought that was too much so we provide the milk.

I can see how the PTO/school is using the endless dollars collected from parents to help the school. We have had some really good saftey measures implemented because of the fundraising and things like that.

However . . . I have two school age children right now that are back to back in years. The fees here to schedule at the beginning of the year are $48 per student. Then it's the back to school list that for my kindergardener was two pages long. Then they return to school and come home with a pile of papers, in it (for both - so my cost is times two) milk for snack time $45 a sememster, computer lab fee (huh???) $15 per sememster, bus fee for the field trips planned $15 and by the way, they may have to charge more later if they go over budget (that's my fault??) class party fee $8 and then they wait two week and send home the first fundraiser. They get the kids all hyped up in school that if they sell 25 items (up 5 from last year) they get to have a pizza party and a ride in a limo. So my kids are all hyped up and I can think is that this is going to be 50 items at roughly $10 an item. The calculator in my head is telling me this is not cool.

On top of all that, we just got our second semester "bill" home so we're getting ready to pay most of it out again and their gearing up for their second "big" fundraiser. Oh boy!

For this fundraiser, I told the girls we would sell what we could, but they probably won't meet the goal for the school's prize. I told them that from now on for school fundraiser's if they don't meet the schools goal for a prize, I will take the day off of work (with my personal time ) and take them out for pizza anywhere they want to go. It costs me roughly $250-$350 to get them to the school's goal. We could go to Chuck E Cheese (not one around here yeah!) for a lot less than that!!!! They were very excited about going to pizza hut on a school day for lunch!!

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If it wasn't on a clearance rack, it's not in my house!

Thanks everyone for sharing your thoughts. I think lately the biggest thing that bothers me is I feel like they are using my kids. I never mind when the teacher needs supplies, hand cleaner, snacks etc. I just don't like the selling JUNK and some company making a profit off my kid and the school getting pennies for it. I also don't like the idea that we are never told what the money we earn is spent on. We live in a neighborhood of homes in the $500,000 range and bought ours long before they started building this area. I'm probably one of the few who is able to live in this great area and my house payment is only $1000 a month. I think because the people here have so much money they don't really think or care what the school spends it on which makes it hard on other families who have to set some boundaries. We do participate in the book fair and I donate everytime the teacher asks and I donate my time to help her, the PTA, book fair, auction, Grandparents & Veterans breakfasts etc. I think I'm going to continue with those things and just not let my kids get "caught" up in all the needless stuff. Thanks for a lot of great ideas!

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Standard of Living and Quality of life are NOT the same thing.