I was so happy to find my daughter’s school after spending hours upon hours upon hours researching the hundreds of Chicago schools. The scores weren’t perfect, but I am not a huge fan of testing anyway. It had a core group of hyper-dedicated parents, increasing enrollment, and upward trends in every area.
I am still pleased with the school itself. Ava has made high-quality friends, she loves her teacher, and her Principal is a tireless advocate for the school and the children. All these things put together are bound to make a successful elementary school experience.
But the district as a whole? I am a little disgusted. I am not entirely sure yet whether the problems are inherently at the district level, or the state level, or the federal level, or if it is public schooling in general.
There is a Disney Elementary Magnet School here. Not just in name or funding. Go ahead and check out the site. Children spend their days immersed in the advertising of what is quite possible the greatest symbol of American consumption and the selling out of our children to corporate interests.
But it’s the small stuff, too. It doesn’t take the creation of a Disney school to see the corporate funding of our schools. It’s the box tops for education. In order for schools to get this money, parents must spend extra on groceries, buying brand name products from companies who already enjoy a disproportionate amount of our food dollars. And it means that those of us who shop local have to find other ways of supporting the school. Sorry, Kraft. You are NOT getting my money.
It’s the scholastic book fairs. These catalogues come home from school full of books based on the newest movies and cartoons. Some classics, too, but it’s hard for the genuinely good stuff to compete with the trendy. The catalogue my daughter brought home this week carried video games, spongebob figurines, and books featuring Hannah Montana, the Jonas brothers, and High School Musical. It is so difficult to have discussions with 7-year-olds about advertising, how it makes you want things that you really don’t want, and the way that it makes you value yourself based on the stuff you own. Sometimes I am up for that fight and sometimes I am not. This week I was not. I buried the catalog, looked at it at night, and sent the envelope to school without consulting Ava. I ordered a 4-pack of The Magic Treehouse, a 5-pack of short readers starring second graders, Nate the Great, and a book about muscles and bones that came with a bendable skeleton. (Mom wrote a great post about the Scholastic book fairs. To update her point, note that Scholastic has agreed to stop pimping Bratz merchandise at school fairs.) Sometimes I do take the heavy-handed “my money, my choice” road.
A major fundraiser for my daughter’s school is a shopping event at a home retail store. It’s a steep $100 to attend. For that you get a gift, drinks and appetizers, and a $50 gift card to the store. If you spend beyond the $50, part of the sale goes to the school. This just doesn’t sit well with my anti-consumerism. Why do I have to shop to support the school? The money for this fundraiser will (hopefully) fill the funding gap that has prevented a full-time music program. Currently, only 4 of the 8 grades are able to take music. Because we all know how worthless music education is… Of course, if everyone just donated $100, the money would go much much further. But these days, everyone expects to get something for their donation. They can’t just give for the sake of giving.
There is also a current debate concerning the potential placement of cell towers at the school. At $24,000 a year per tower, and potential for 3 towers, what’s an underfunded school to do? I have voiced my concern, and downright opposition, to the towers. There are too many unknowns regarding the health and safety of the staff and students. And frankly, it’s just the straw that broke the camels back for me. I am tired of my daughter’s school being forced to prostitute itself to corporate interests just to function.
And to add insult to injury, the reward for the diligence of the school’s parents in promoting the schools and recruiting families to the neighborhood is this: the ratio of free and reduced lunch students has declined, which means less discretionary funds, which means that full-day kindergarten may be on the chopping block next year, which means more private funding in the future or fewer resources. Lovely.
October 22, 2008 at 4:39 pm
Vivian brought home a pile of tripe to “fundraise” with a few weeks ago. It promptly went in the trash. I will NOT make my kids shills. She was staring at the “what I could win!” pamphlet until I reminded her that we’ve seen all of that stuff at the dollar store, and if she REALLY wanted it, she could spend HER money on it.
The Scholastics-we have a rule-if it has a movie, commercial or tv show it will NOT be bought. There’s plenty of interesting stuff otherwise, and I hold veto anyway.
We give the school money at the beginning of the year. I’d rather they ask for more than make us sell things. I’ll hand over supplies or cash before I make my kids into little salesmen.
October 22, 2008 at 7:07 pm
I am so tired of the pimping. At least I believe in my daughter’s school (an optional immersion program supported heavily by parent participation and donation). I am more pleased with the things like our annual apple sale from a local orchard and the other less trashy marketed options. But I also recognize that the population at her school is a slightly more elevated economic bracket and feel a little guilty about abandoning our neighborhood school that struggles in a more impoverished demographic.
My compensation is I am considering getting involved in the community girl scout troop. As son as I decide how I feel about the girl scouts…
October 22, 2008 at 9:55 pm
We get that kinda stuff from our community based childcare centre (it’s based on church grounds, and is run by a parent committee, there’s no church influence over the program). I’m happy to help out at working bees, but I don’t (and can’t afford, even if I wanted to) go to auction nights or buy plastic crapola from catalogues.
They do all the fundraising to keep the fees low, so that people like me can afford childcare, but then hearing about all the fundraising I can’t get involved in just makes me feel like the poor relation.
October 23, 2008 at 1:08 am
I never realized how much of this was going on until moving to the suburbs as this never worked when I taught inner-city for raising $$$ for the school. My parents pay $150 a person to go to a fundraiser for my nephews school (high SES) each fall and they have a lot of really cool programs (music, yoga, etc).
Have you ever read any Jonathan Kozol? His book Savage Inequalities really hammers how the public funding of schools creates inequity and he goes into detail about corporate funding, etc. He is one of my heroes.
October 23, 2008 at 1:19 am
Glad I’m not the only one who finds this nauseating. Thanks for the book recommendation, MT. Will definitely check it out!
October 23, 2008 at 9:33 am
Our tiny little school does a heap of fundraising – they need to get around $12,000 a year to fund the stuff they fund, from a group of 60 kids. There is a genuine effort not to become completely commercial, although it doesn’t always succeed. They do sell stuff – but it is stuff like plant bulbs, tea towels that every child in the school contributed a picture to, family photography (very borderline, in my opinion, not least because I fell for it), a trivia night that costs $15 a head but auctions stuff off. We also sell sausage sandwiches at a hardware store twice a year, taxing people other than parents. Elections are good too, for raising money from non-school people.
The only thing we sell to the kids is cakes, twice a term, for 20 cents each.
But it is disgusting that so much hard work has to go into providing a music teacher, a gymnastics program (for one term) and other things that should be funded publicly. And even our supposedly left wing government still gives more money to private schools than public ones. I hate the old boys network.
October 23, 2008 at 12:54 pm
WTH?!! I haven’t begun to look into kindergarten for my oldest — which, that reminds me, I really need to do — but this freaks me out. A Disney magnet school or cell towers over our kids? These are actual choices? SERIOUSLY?!!!
October 23, 2008 at 4:06 pm
We get the scholastic books and magazine drives. However, there is one fund-raising program that I LOVE. The school has a program with local businesses. You can buy gift cards to several local businesses (including grocery stores and restaurants!) in the school office and, depending on the the business, 10-20% of the money goes back into the school. It’s a win-win.
Disney magnet school????? Gag.
October 24, 2008 at 2:38 am
Can’t believe the Disney school.
And now I understand how furious my own mom used to get when people would ask me to sell stuff when the school or the Brownies would only get a fraction of what their little tiny sales force brought in. Oh, this is depressing.
October 24, 2008 at 3:24 pm
And I should say that I am not against ALL fundraising. But so much of it is sooo commercial and comes at the expense of our children’s well-being. Sometimes, it’s just NOT worth the money.