“The flag fee is only gonna be $200 this year and she needs it now but we get to keep our costumes.”
Um, yay?
Dear Knox County Schools,
Do not send home coupon books for my children to sell. Do not ask for the addresses of all my friends and family members so you can push magazines on them. Do not tell my children they can win dollar store prizes for selling gift wrap, cookie dough, trinkets or pies. Do not hold school carnivals that only the students who have parents buying tons of this garbage get to attend. I will be writing about $500 dollars in fees to you AND buying a few hundred dollars worth of supplies before the first week of school is over. Don’t ask me to do more or I may have a screaming tantrum. Nobody wants to see that. Doug doesn’t want to hear that. For everyone’s sake, don’t try making my children salesmen for your trash.
Thanks for using good sense,
Cathy
It is simply a question of picking your own poison.
If they don’t have the fundraisers, then either you wind up getting smacked with more fees, or an increase in property taxes thanks to a higher municipal school tax.
Since politicians are tax phobic, you will not see it in your muni-taxes (unless there really is no choice, like a major expense or repair). People are already in most places screaming about the fees. Thus leaving them stuck with the fundraisers.
I only wish they would pick this darn things a bit more judiciously, I mean some of these fundraiser are just total junk (i.e. gift wrap, cards, trinkets) and at a point I get embarassed to actually you know ask people to consider buying this junk. Let me sell some decent chocolate, or Yankee Candles, or you know anything where at least I can feel better about having to hawk these things.
(Of course I could mention how much good could have been done with the Billions of Dollas we have already wasted in Iraq if it had been put into our school systems instead… but I don’t want to be accused of making it “political.”)