I was in the Girl Scouts and remember having to sell cookies door to door. I’d never let my kids do that now. I threw out my daughter’s Katheryn Beich (not sure if that’s spelled right) package and she’s happy with my decision.

When I was a kid, my mom was head of the PTA. Once a year, they held this event called the “Family Fun Fair.” She spent months going to area businesses and parents asking for food, raffle prize, paper plates/plastic utensils/drinking cups, and beverage donations or help running game booths. Then for one night, the school gym was turned into a carnival of sorts. Game booths were set up, tickets were sold, and there were pony rides, and a bouncy castle. That even would draw in thousands of dollars and the community loved it. As we got older, she left the PTA and the event was never held again. It’s really quite sad because it was such a draw for the entire community.

I’ve mentioned that to the school here and their comment is always the same “We can’t use the school setting for something like that due to insurance regulations.” It sucks that community events are now revolving around insurance problems as well.

Our school also did plant sales around Mother’s Day. Nothing as cool as the bazaar you described, though.

The story about your son being forced to fundraise is awful. If my kids’ schools ever do that, I’ll be writing to the editors of every paper in town! (Not to mention probably changing schools as soon as possible, the commute be d#mned.)

By the way, I was a gifted child too, so I clearly remember the battles my mom had to fight on my own behalf. I was moved up a grade — they moved me into first grade after only a month or so of kindergarten because I was so bored — and although I wouldn’t ever have changed that, it didn’t really solve anything. I was still bored, and the school’s “gifted program” back then was usually just assigning extra research to keep us busier.

Likewise, my younger sister went to a special school for gifted children, and you know what she got? Wordsearches and crossword puzzles.

The book sales which raise funds and generate free books for the schools. . .those are great too. Again, no door-to-door or putting it on the kids to pester people.

Of course, they had to know that the kids who REALLY wanted that cheap pink radio weren’t going to get it selling only to family friends.

The whole thing disgusts me — they get all the kids into the auditorium, show them all these cool freebies they can earn if they sell a million candy bars, and get them all jazzed up about it. It’s just as immoral as targeting marketing campaigns at kids — they’re taking advantage of the fact that kids are impressionable and easily manipulated.

Fundraising is awful. My own two don’t participate in it, but this year my son was forced into it. The 8th grade class takes a class trip to Montreal for a day of fun at the end of the year. We were sent a letter stating that children had two choices, fundraise to pay for their share of the field trip and all of the money they earn buys them a place on the field trip instantly, or parents had to cough up the $160 by the second week of September. We can’t come up with that much money that quickly, especially when the storm that hit this area damaged our roof and that had to be first priority, so he has to do the fundraising. The email that he sent out to our family and friends about how he was being forced and really hated bothering them but had no other option was a riot and certainly got his point across clearly.

I don’t know if I would say overpaid. For someone who was doing their job, $40K starting would be pretty fair. I personally would say that either the education system has failed your teachers as much as it is now failing your students, OR they are simply in the wrong profession.

The fundraising is an issue for me, too, by the way. In fact, my husband and I were just talking the other day about how we’ll handle it when we have kids…and that’s with an emphatic “No thank you.” We both strongly feel that not only should kids not be used for fundraising, but also that it is horribly annoying to have someone else’s kids pestering you to buy something. WE will not be “those people,” at least.

Both of my kids are counted as “gifted” so the school and I have had many battles – if you can call them battles. My son was reading at the age of 3, books are something that are always in my house. I even have my set of Dr. Seuss books from my own childhood, Mog The Forgetful Cat is another, and then Wende & Harry Devlin books. I won’t part with them. When he was about to turn 5, we went to register him in kindergarten and were told that the school was changing its policy to have all students start kindergarten nearer to the age of 6, so he was one of the “red shirted” ones. By the time he started kindergarten though I protested to have him start earlier, he was reading books like the Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, he could add and subract, wrote sentences, etc. Because the school board denied us early entrance for him saying it wouldn’t be fair, the teachers and I had many battles over what they would make him do in class.

By 2nd grade, they were telling me I should move him up a year, which I refused to do. First, he’d said he had friends and didn’t want to start over. Second, they told me in the beginning that starting him early would damage his school career so to suddenly say he needed to skip a grade was absurd when they fought me from the start. He’s now in middle school and to keep him from becoming bored, they’ve had to be very creative. They taught him a pre-algebra class last year and have him in algebra this year (8th grade). When he starts high school next year, he’ll go straight into Geometry.

Teachers here (I’m in northern Vermont) make a good salary. They can say they don’t, but starting out they are making close to $40k and I keep close tabs on their salaries. It is town policy to post what the teachers make. My daughter’s teacher is in his 3rd year with the middle school, and is making $42k. My son’s English teacher has been with the school for 28 years and earns close to $60k. On top of this, they do not pay for their health or dental insurance, the taxpayers cover it all. They get 3 weeks of vacation per year after five years which increases with longevity, plus fourteen sick days. All of this for working from the end of August to the beginning of June – classes are from 8am to 2:15 pm for elementary and 8:45 to 3pm for the middle school. They can opt to receive paychecks year round or just during the school year. I don’t see that they really have it that bad here.

But this is only the tip of the iceberg for me. What ticks me off is getting home papers from my kids’ teachers or the office staff. I’ve seen kindergarten spelled “kindergarden” in these newsletters or notes to parents. I’ve seen their used for there. Some of the grammar is horrible and for that I feel the teachers are truly overpaid.

The PTA here, I was a member once and they definitely kiss up to the teachers. That bothers me because they don’t tend to argue anything that is going on in the school. The majority of the focus is on raising money for the playground areas. The policy was that using kids to fundraise is mandatory, I disagree. The kids that sell the most can skip half a school day and be taken by limo to the area pizza restaurant which again I disagree with because my kids have one set of living grandparents and I have two brothers – that’s it for family. My husband cannot take the fundraisers to work – it’s against company policy. Meanwhile, if the kids sell door to door, they are disqualified. My son has two classmates that have step-siblings. One of them has 14 brothers/sisters and another has 21. No one can outsell these kids. The PTA thought I was wrong for saying the system should be changed to make it fair for all kids to win this day from school, so I never bothered joining back up.

I won’t say the school does nothing right, because policies on bullying are exceptional today. But where the education comes into play, the NECAP tests are focused on far too much and education has really diminished.