In my school district, high school band members and parents spend an inordinate amount of time fund raising while our “financially strapped” district pays the Superintendant
a six-figure salary AND leases him a car. This guy also does not lack Assistant Superintendants, either.
We’re talking a 10,000-pupil district in suburban Omaha–an area where people who make half that and buy their own cars, to boot, enjoy a decent standard of living.We’re not talking a San Francisco or New York area where the living costs and the number of pupils and buildings might justify six figures and a car.
This "poor district is also in the process of selling bonds to construct a new $8.1 Million Imperial Palace that they have dubbed a “learning center”.
I suspect that this empire building under the guise of “helping the children” is not restricted to my area of the country.
Next time your children are called upon to sell stuff, drive them to the homes of the school board members, the superintendant, the assistant superintendents, and the school principals. Chances are, in these recessionary times,
they’re the only ones left who can afford the crap.
This summer one of the highschools in my area had their cheerleaders going up to cars stopped at redlights and asking for donations. They weren’t even selling anything!
The cheerleaders were standing on the street corner and when the light turned red they ran up to the cars and held out a can. They needed money for new uniforms. I couldn’t decide if they looked more like hookers or panhandlers.
I couldn’t imagine allowing my child to do something like that.
Seems not too long ago I was doing this myself (I will not allow my children to do it, when I have them; we lived in a rural area and used to go around in groups door-to-door). I remember one of the last times I did, I was selling those plasticy fake ‘ice’ christmas tree decorations (cute! we still have some) My brother and I were selling them to the residents in an old-folks area. One lady opened up the door, and apologized ‘I’m sorry, I can’t look at the catalogue, I’m blind.’ :eek:
At least she couldn’t see the shade of red I turned.
And then there was the guy with the freezer that would freeze everything but ice cream… We’d stop in just to see if he’d gotten a new one so he could buy ice cream from us
Zumba, YWalker, both of those stories are disturbing. Esp the latter. Sounds like hooker training
Guh! I hate how the school system sends out children to hawk crap for them!!
The kids feel compelled to do it through peer pressure. The parents feel compelled to do it because of parental love. The neighbors (that’s me) feel compelled to buy this crap to keep neighborhood harmony and because they’re a sweet bunch of kids.
I have so far bought and am expecting:[list]
[li]A container of cookie dough (I’m a 29 year old bachelor, what the hell am I expected to do with this? Calk the windows?).[/li][li]A tin of some substandard candy which I will probably palm off in the coffee room.[/li][li]A tin of popcorn, sold at roughly 500% above market price.[/li]
(sigh)
And the school just views it as “found money” I suppose. Whatever happened to bake sales? I’d gladly spend $20 for a cake or tray of brownies if I knew that the school would be getting all the proceeds and not some pissant percentage.
we plan on homeschooling our cub, and if we fail at this and he ends up in the state pen (local school) you can bet your ass he’s not going to end up whoring this crap around the neighborhood, and im sure not gonna foist it on my coworkers. i refuse to even look at the catalogs.
i did buy one of those “entertainment discount” books from some woman selling them for her kid. it was kinda cool. for $20 i ate 1/2 price dinner everywhere! i figure i saved a bundle.
Part of people’s objections to this is that the kids are selling stuff that nobody would buy if not subjected to pressure. An “entertainment book” is a good value to a lot of people. Girl Scout cookies are good cookies, at least. My high-school band used to sell crates of Florida grapefruits.
If I run into this situation with any future Bean Sprouts, I’m gonna refuse, too. I, too, would rather donate 10 bucks than buy a “gift wrap set” or something useless.
What happened to the old-fashioned car wash? They still do them in my town. Do they do them in other places?
For the last three years my neices attended Catholic school and had a zillion fundraisers to do for each. Every single time I wrote out a check to the school and included a letter about how I don’t think kids should have to do fundraising for schools. The worst part is, they paid tuition there! (and it wasn’t cheap!)
I mean, why not just set the rate and whatever the fuck it costs to run the place and be done with it. Kids shouldn’t have to sell it, and I don’t want to buy it.
Somebody, please, do start a separate rant about soda machines being in an elementary school. My fucking jaw just dropped and I think I’m gonna blow an artery in my neck. Soda machines? At an elementary school? With the public health problems we have in this goddamn country?!?!
Tell me this isn’t true. If it is true, give me your superindent’s address. That’s an outrage.
We used to have A soda machine (1) in our school, and kids could not use it unless it was after school hours (like you were studying late or had band practice and such). I assume the teachers could use it all day long, though.
If someone starts a rant about soda machines in an elementary school, how about fast food in schools?? Like kids don’t get enough fucking Taco Bell and McDonalds.
The rule at my house is that I buy X from the first tyke that knocks on the door. If tyke number 2 shows up selling the same thing, I say I already bought something. There is almost always something you can get for less than $10 and it goes to the kids in the end anyway. I don’t see what the big deal is.
Having said that, if I had the choice between buying frozen pizzas, more wrapping paper or chocalate bars, I’d buy some chocolate bars. I mean, SOMEONE in my house will eat the chocalate. I already have a closet full of the wrapping paper and those pizzas don’t taste very good.
A couple of years ago, there was a kid from the elementary school, walking the streets to sell crapalogue candy and sausage. He came up to my door, IIRC he did not have a parent with him, and could not have been more than 8 years old, He looked kind of forlorn, and feeling sorry for the mite, i bought some of his candy.
I have not seen any kids come by this year, but my sister was pimpimg crapalogue shiznit for choir, and they were also selling Entertainment coupon books for $30. I have not ssen any GirlScouts come by this year selling cookies, but someone brought a form to work, and so i am getting my fix like that.
Mercifully, my school didn’t have that much in the way of useless sales–we’d mainly sell subs and pasties (Upper Peninsula high school). Since the product was pretty tasty (especially the pasties), it didn’t feel so bad selling them. In fact, we made a rather huge amount of profit. When we made our class trip in Chicago, the class advisor was basically throwing money at us. I came out of that trip well fed and about 50 or 60 dollars richer…
Can’t say for sure why your nieces’ school won’t do it, but I know why my kid’s school won’t do it.Every year, the tuition has to be recalculated,based on what the cost per child is, how much of a subsidy the parish gives, and the amount expected to come in through fundraising. Usually, the fundraising budget comes to $250/per family (in profit).The school could easily get rid of nearly all of the fundraising (leaving in those activities that raise money and are fun like bingo nights, pizza lunches, etc). raise the tuition $250 per family,and come out ahead. Why don’t they?Because while I will end up spending something over $250 myself for the school to get $250 (two of the candy sales are mandatory-each family must sell a box because the school has to commit to a certain number of boxes-aside from that,cash is fine ), others greatly prefer to have their kids sell candy,wrapping paper,christmas cards,lottery calendars.raffle tickets, etc so that they don’t have to come up with the cash thamselves. Every time I say “Let’s get rid of the fundraising and just raise the tuition”, the other parents look at me like I have two heads.
They’re meat pies. It’s pronounced PASS-teez, not PASTE-eez, BTW. I can’t find a link with a photo, but I understand that the name traces back to miners in Cornwall, and their most common lunch bucket item. They’re a bit more widespread now.
Think Hostess Fruit Pie, make it a bit larger, and replace the fruit filling with beef stew, and you’ll have a general idea that these do not accessorize with a G-String.
Hey if a stripper farts on stage, is that an air on a G-string?
