Reply to Do you think parents who volunteer and donate more to schools deserve better treatment for their child?

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Reply to "Do you think parents who volunteer and donate more to schools deserve better treatment for their child?"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]As a blanket statement, no.  [b]Some students have parents who are working 2 jobs, or are in foster care, and they should absolutely not be penalized for not having basically a SAHP who can volunteer 10 hours a week or a rich parent who can fund the entire PTA.[/b]

If we are allowed nuance- I do think that if a parent is an unusually helpful volunteer, or takes on volunteer tasks that one one wants (everyone wants to chaperone the cute half day field trip with their child, no one wants to volunteer to mop the cafeteria floors and take all the trash to the dump after the school carnival ends at 9pm), it should not be frowned upon if that kid's family maybe gets picked to run the most fun carnival booth, or maybe if a parent volunteers to be the backstage mom at a drama club performance- therefore not getting to watch her child perform, since she's backstage, this is a classic job that no one signs up for ever in our school's drama club- then that student's family (the other parent, etc) gets front row seats to the performance and a free copy of the DVD recording to show to the backstage mom afterwords.[/quote]

I agree with the bolded but also think you need to be very careful assuming you know enough about another family to know if parents are able to volunteer or donate money. I work part time and have gotten some very rude comments from other parents about my level of volunteering (just stuff to the tune of "you have so much time!" when soliciting for volunteers) because they assume I have a wide open schedule. What none of them know is that I work part time because I have a chronic illness and TBH even my current workload plus being a parent is very hard when I'm also dealing with pain, or having to go to multiple PT appointments a week. I don't disclose my health situation to people I barely know so I don't announce this, but I know for a fact there are people who think I'm selfish because I "only" volunteer a few times a year.

Regarding your examples, though, I don't actually view those as preferential treatment. It's normal that families who volunteer for heavier lifting for an event would get some benefits at the event itself, to make up for the what they might miss out on due to volunteering. When people say preferential treatment in this context, I assume they are talking about class assignments, special opportunities for kids that not everyone gets, or especially kind or deferential treatment by the staff/administration toward the kids.[/quote]

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