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Old September 6th 08, 12:36 AM posted to misc.kids
Donna Metler
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Posts: 309
Default school supplies!


"Anne Rogers" wrote in message
. ..

If the school is in an area where the majority of students couldn't
afford such a trip, then that's when you have to start appealing to
local companies etc. not expecting the few that can pay to pay for
everyone.

I doubt VERY much if we would have been allowed to do that at a public
school.


Why not? I read just today of a huge amount of money travelling between a
local company and the local school district, perhaps what makes it ok is
that the money officially comes from a foundation, which was created by
the owner of the company and technically is his choosing to do something
with a portion of his earnings. But the company does directly channel a
lot of money in to local schools (we could be the only school district
where ALL the high schools made the national top 100 last year), it's
never as simple as just handing over the money, but for every hour an
employee gives their time to the school, such as volunteering in the
classroom the company gives 17 dollars to the school. For every donation
an employee makes to a charity, the donation is matched - I'm not sure
exactly what bits of school are registered charities, but PTA fundraisers
must be. It would be VERY interesting to see a break down of where money
came from for the entire budget, I would guess that a significant amount
does come indirectly from this one company.

The one thing on this-in my experience, such grants come with strings, so I
wouldn't assume that the money could be used wherever the school needs it. A
lot of the basic classroom needs just aren't "sexy" to grantors-whether it's
the federal government or private industry. So, you get schools where you
have thousands of dollars in computer technology, but not enough books to go
around, or situations (which happened to me), where the band program has
gotten several large grants for instruments so low income students can
participate, but no funding to purchase reeds and care items or pay for
ongoing maintenance and repairs, and so on. Lots of positive press for the
donations, but in reality, it still ended up largely that kids who had
parents who could pay could do band-it just reduced the amount they needed
to pay because the school now had an instrument for them to use.

And the same applies to PTAs/PTOs. It's unlikely that parents will rush out
and fundraise to buy crayons, since many of the PTA parents probably are
more stretched for time than for money, but they'll do it for a greenhouse
or smartboards.

What usually happens if parents don't send in supplies is that the teachers
are going around to Staples and Walmart and buying things they know their
students will need cheaply out of their own pocket(many teachers actually go
online and find out the sales before the flyers come out, so they can be at
the store when it opens. Such threads are common on teaching message
boards)-and then parents can't get the $.01 items at Staples because the
teachers bought them all.

There are freebies out there for classroom use, but you're kind of damned if
you do and damned if you don't as a teacher. Military recruiters, for
example, will happily outfit you with pencils, rulers, spiral notebooks,
band folders, instrument tags, name tag lanyards and the like-but
invariably, you'll have parents complaining that their child is being
recruited into the military because you'll then have "Go Navy" or "Be all
you can be" everywhere. Commercial companies will also provide many school
supplies-but again, then your classroom is advertising whatever products
they sell-and invariably, someone will complain.