Time to return to the bake sale?

Over the years my children have brought a constant stream of fund-raising materials from school, each with tactics to put emotional pressure on parents, and I have finally had it with this blackmail. I understand times are tough, our schools are losing money and we need to help. However, I do not appreciate our schools’ and PTO’s liaisons with the commercial vendors and their becoming a party to this.

I attended an assembly in my kids’ school once and somebody from a fund-raising company spoke at the assembly. The speaker exhorted kids to sell more and showed them all the goodies they could earn. I was aghast at this exploitation of our children. I would have been much happier giving $20 directly to the PTO instead of putting my kids through this and then buying $50 worth of cookie dough out of which the school got all of $10!

Our school had a picture session this Spring, in addition to the one in Fall. An order form came home which I did not sign and thought this meant that I was expressly declining my kids’ photos being taken. However, not only were their pictures taken but also sent home in their backpacks along with various photo-trinkets. I knew I was under no obligation to buy but I still had to endure constant begging from my kids and then repeatedly say no.

Then we had the Scholastic book fair, selling some books and lot of unnecessary trinkets. First, the kids were paraded through the book fair making a “wish list” to bring home. Then they were taken en-masse with their peers for a shopping trip to the fair. What parent can bear the thought of their child being the only one without any money to buy a ridiculous, large and unnecessary finger-pointer-thingy, when all her friends are buying one? I love books, I and my kids are avid readers and I even volunteer for the book fair but I really dislike the tactics used by Scholastic. Why don’t we just ask families to donate books for a used book sale? We would be teaching our kids to reuse in addition to buying wonderful books.

The last straw is an Art Gallery Event the school will be hosting. I have to Pony up $30 per child to have their artwork framed and displayed at this event. Do I want to once again be the parent who says no, and lets my child down in front of her peers? Our school used to have a similar albeit non-commercial event called the “Art Walk”, where students’ artwork was simply placed on construction paper and displayed in the hallways and parents gathered one evening to eat together and view the art. It was a wonderful event to bring the community together and I am sad to see it go.

Now I am the last person to let my child to succumb to peer pressure. However, I would like to choose to do this on my own terms and am quite offended by being repeatedly put in the position of the “bad person”, by my children’s school no less.

Alas, I do not have enough time to jump in a become the PTO president or even the fund-raising chair. I can share ideas and occasionally volunteer. Still I did write an email to the principal and the PTO today.