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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Here's your choice:
A parent volunteer or paid person to coordinate everything, take payments, manage insurance, building permits etc. OR you get a company like Flex to do all the work but they raise the prices because they need to get paid.

If you have someone willing to do the work, great. If not, Flex makes sense.

[/quote]

I could have written this! The only difference is that when I organized our school's, we handled the sign ups and processed the money. We also asked vendors to offer 2 scholarships if classes met a certain threshold. It was a fair amount of work but totally manageable. I like your model even better. Still, I worked really hard to make sure our classes were affordable, raised money for the PTA (we also offered parent-volunteer led clubs which made money for the PTA) and served FARMs kids. Now, the have two coordinators, but it is "too much work" so they brought on FLEX. One even said she didn't care if the offerings made money for the PTA or served FARMs kids as long as enrollment was easy and online. Now there are fewer classes, fewer FARMs kids served, exorbitant prices, no money for the PTA, lots of bureaucracy and no accountability.[/quote]

I have volunteered in a wide variety of roles in my kids' schools for the past 12 years, and much of that time has been in coordinating after-school activities.  In my experience, it is truly a lot of work to get enough parent or teacher volunteers for the range of activities the students and parents want, and takes constant time and attention and guidance and help.  I have also brought in outside vendors when we can't get volunteers, and yes, they do a lot of the work -- but it is still a significant effort on my part.  If there were an easier way to do it, I'd have gladly taken that route -- instead, the choice is either do the work or don't have the activity.

Flex would certainly add to the expense, but then parents who don't feel like volunteering have options for their kids that wouldn't be there.  If they don't like the offerings, they need to get Flex to bring in things that the kids want -- and people who have used Flex tell me that this is what they will do.  If they don't like the expense, they can volunteer to bring in individual vendors themselves.  It seems unfair to blame Flex for costing more and offering less when the parents could solve this problem, they just appear to choose not to do so because it actually IS work to do Flex's job.[/quote]

Not unfair at all. I am an individual vendor! FLEX makes my class exhorbitantly priced. I also used to coordinate. We had lots of local vendors and some parent led clubs. Vendors offered scholarships,  volunteer led club income went to PTA.  Yes, it was a fair amount of work, but I  would have a few volunteers to help coordinate.  It wasn't crazy. FLEX is a gigantic rip off.[/quote]

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