Mandatory?
???
Do you have to sign a contract to that effect?
More or less. It’s not an actual legalese contract, but it was listed in the financial obligations I agreed to upon enrollment (remember,it’s a private school). I can’t imagine anyone getting sued over it, but I can imagine the same steps being taken as are taken when tuition is not paid- next years registration being refused,reports cards or diplomas being withheld etc.
Have a Scholastic Book Fair!!!
[sub]I am not biased in any way I swear :D[/sub]
[shameless advertising plug]
I work for one of those evil fundraiser companies. I like to think we have a little better program than selling candy and such.
Takes about a week of work, many of the fairs are run by parent volunteers, and in that week they average about $600 in profit to the school, some do as much as $4,000 in my area. I think the record is up around $10,000.
In a nutshell the school runs a childrens bookstore for a week or so. We provide the products and pretty much everything you need. We deliver it, and pick up whats left over. We run training classes for helping schools better operate their fairs, etc, etc.
[/shameless advertising plug]
Also where I live one of the school districts got some kind of property tax add on voted in, that goes directly to the schools. Couldn’t find a cite (clovis unified School district, clovis, Ca) my mother pays an extra $120 a year in property taxes because she lives in that district. Those schools are very well taken care of and have an excellent reputation.
Ask schools to provide written documentation of what the fundraiser is for. I know when I was in HS my fundraiser money went into a “personal student account” that I could spend from on various student activities (trips, shop fees, etc) So I could participate in fundraisers or my parents could deposit directly to the account to save for future activities, etc. We could go to the office and check our account balances. I liked it because you could kick ass in one fund raiser and be covered all year.
To support various youth activities I sold:
Girl Scout Cookies - I grew tits in the fourth grade. So picture an overdeveloped kid stuffed into a girl scout uniform wandering the back roads of rural New England alone.
Candy Bars
Box-O-Crap - This was a shoddy cardboard suitcase filled with “samples” of crap that could be ordered and then had to be delivered by wandering the same dismal back roads a month later. The handles broke the first day.
Crap from the Crapalogue
Handicrap
Crapmas Ornaments
Crapping Paper and Ribbon
Advent Crapendars
Superbowl Sunday Crapwiches
my mom’s super yummy bakesale goods
I have also driven around in a minivan collecting scum-filled bottles and cans to sort and bring to recycling centers, washed & vacuumed cars, and performed at minimalls and shopping centers to raise money for school activities.
I’m sure I’ve left something out. It’s funny - when I played sports, I didn’t have to sell anything for the sports teams. We had uniforms, coaches, transportation to events. When I was in band and choir, we had to sell all manner of crapware AND buy our own instruments and uniforms. I think the neighbors had a telephone tree - they would no sooner see me traipsing down the street, cradling my Box-O-Crap, when garage doors and blinds would magically be closed.
My mom refused to hawk any crap for me at work (for which I cannot blame her, as I patently refuse to buy any of my cow-orker’s craptacular crapalicious crapware. I’m a fucking temp). She thought it was “character building” for me to sell the stuff myself, and if I wouldn’t sell it then maybe I didn’t deserve to be in whatever activity it was. I was finally delivered in high school when a local drug kingpin moved onto my street. He was always good for laundering a couple hundred bucks through the school system, and would buy the entire inventory of whatever I was selling. He probably had to sell the same shit when he was a kid, only he turned his sales experience into a lucrative career. 
Where I live was pretty spread out and remote, and I’m lucky that I didn’t end up “putting the lotion in the basket” in a pit under someone’s garage.
While fundraisers like bottle drives and car washes (service/activity oriented) are fine, I would never let a child of mine sell stuff door to door, and I give WILD APPLAUSE to the parents who refuse to let their kids hawk this garbage or hawk it for them so that the schools can earn $0.50/item. And, for the record, I have voted in favor of every school funding proposition everywhere I have ever lived.
We really do have a problem if the U.S. education system hinges on the salesmanship of ten-year-olds.
Absolutely correct (except the filling is more like a meatloafy substance composed of meat, potatoes, and–optionally–onions, carrots, and so forth). Very savory and filling. If you’re ever in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, see if you can find some. The best kind are homemade, natch.
The car washes aren’t quite so innocent anymore.
Couple of months ago, I was driving home from work, and I noticed a couple of pubescent little girls holding a sign advertising their car wash for whatever group they were in. These were junior high girls, mind you, standing on the intersection, jumping up and down with their signs. And they were wearing hot pink BIKINIS.
If I’d had a blanket in my car I’d have jumped out and covered them up. What kind of parent lets her budding young female progeny bounce around an intersection in a bikini? Especially in this inbred redneck little town, where the general attitude is, “If there’s grass on the playing field, she’s old enough to tackle!”?
Since I’m homeschooling my oldest boy, the only fundraiser I have to worry about is Cub Scouts popcorn sales. And what I like about that is, around here anyway, a fairly large percentage of the money goes into his Scouting account to pay for camp this summer. Last year 10 days of Webelos II camp only cost me $60, and since we be po’folk, that was a big help.
Does anyone remember Olympia or Sales Leadership? From what I remember, they were two companies who got kids to sell things for them (I have no idea what.) The way it worked was you could either keep $2 for each item sold, or send it all in and choose a prize for selling a certain number of items, the value of which was usually less than what you would get by just taking the money. Are they still around?
I don’t know if this is still the case, but when I was a tyke, these companies made a big deal about how they were encourageing salesmanship and initiative in youth.
right
What could this possibly do but turn kids off of sales? I dreaded these things and the petty wheedling they necessitatied. And what did any kid get from this? At best, a cheap toy worth a fraction of what he or she earned for the company. When the market for whatever crap they were selling dried up in a school district, these crooks would pull up stakes, leaving behind a cohort of embiitered prepubescent Willie Lohmans.
(SNIP)
…But I’ll tell you anyway: $2.00 for one damn candy bar!
I’ve never yet seen any kid around here have to sell pizzas, but they sure as hell hawk a lot of candy. And my nieces have to hawk magazine subscriptions, while my young cousin has a crapalogue for both Brownies and her private school.
Sheesh.