2 fundraisers and pictures in the same week

[Anonymous]

I opened my sons backpack today and found a flier for the book fair, an art fundraiser, and school picture order forms. I was a bit surprised that all 3 requests would come home at the same time. This is our first year at the school. Is this normal? The art fundraiser is where he created a painting and the company will imprint it on something.

[Anonymous]

You aren't required to do any of those things so if you don't want to then don't.

What we've found is that there are various committees working on all this stuff and they work independently. Some will be relevant to you and some not. April and May tend to be the most packed in terms of school activities.

[Anonymous]

Ugh.
It may be different committees, but some of these people must have been around last year.
School pictures are the kind of thing that usually can't move, because the school is the one that works out before the school year even starts when the fall and spring pictures will happen.
It would have been better if the other folks had look at the entire year and tried to space out the other items.
Anyway, as PP said, you don't have to do any of these things.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I opened my sons backpack today and found a flier for the book fair, an art fundraiser, and school picture order forms. I was a bit surprised that all 3 requests would come home at the same time. This is our first year at the school. Is this normal? The art fundraiser is where he created a painting and the company will imprint it on something.

My kid's school had the art fundraiser and I was skeptical but what I purchased was surprisingly decent quality and turned out really well.

[Anonymous]

None of those things are true "fundraisers" that require anything of you. If you don't want any books, don't go to the book fair. If you don't want the art (Square One or Art to Remember), then don't buy. School pictures are school pictures, the school doesn't get anything out of it.

I don't understand the problem here.

[Anonymous]

OP here--I realize that I don't have to participate in any or all of the solicitations. But I was just surprised that all the requests to buy something came home at one time.

[Anonymous]

Schools do make $$ off of school picture orders. Why do you think they do them?

[Anonymous]

I had this problem the first year. All the requests would arrive at the same time and they were all due back immediately. There was never enough time to figure out what we wanted to do. As a result, I stopped doing almost all of these things.

[Anonymous]

Spring seems to be an expensive time of year. Seems like between school and clubs and field trips and ancillary supplies, there's always a request for $20 here and $15 there.

[Anonymous]

Well you know there are a lot of moms just like you who are actually involved in the school and work their butt off for fundraisers to raise money for the school. If getting 3 pieces of paper home is too much, just throw them away like 70% of the school does. Pretty sad.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
Well you know there are a lot of moms just like you who are actually involved in the school and work their butt off for fundraisers to raise money for the school. If getting 3 pieces of paper home is too much, just throw them away like 70% of the school does. Pretty sad.

Get over yourself.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
Well you know there are a lot of moms just like you who are actually involved in the school and work their butt off for fundraisers to raise money for the school. If getting 3 pieces of paper home is too much, just throw them away like 70% of the school does. Pretty sad.

Hand the 3 pieces of paper to the father. Problem solved.

[Anonymous]

OP - i totally agree that it's super annoying that:
a) there seems to be gobs of stuff all at once in the spring. At my school we are done with fundraisers but it's tons of events (field trips; special cool things in school but that require volunteers; teacher appreciation week that needs volunteers, etc; etc ;etc). They can't spread this out a bit???

b) there is not much coordination in activities often so no one is in charge of overseeing the paper or events in sum so things can be conflicting sometimes or else all come at once.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP - i totally agree that it's super annoying that:
a) there seems to be gobs of stuff all at once in the spring. At my school we are done with fundraisers but it's tons of events (field trips; special cool things in school but that require volunteers; teacher appreciation week that needs volunteers, etc; etc ;etc). They can't spread this out a bit???

b) there is not much coordination in activities often so no one is in charge of overseeing the paper or events in sum so things can be conflicting sometimes or else all come at once.

And do you go to the PTA meeting to point this out and volunteer to help or just leave it to the 1% of moms helping and continue to complain instead?