Reply to "Congratulations" card from DCPS sent today - another complete waste of money!

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Reply to ""Congratulations" card from DCPS sent today - another complete waste of money!"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]There are about 47,000 kids in DCPS. Assume 2000 graduated this year, so 45,000 could be returning.

It costs about 4 cents for a full-color postcard at http://www.www.cactusmailing.com/. So that's $1800.

According to https://savepostage.com/bulkmail101/rates.html it could be as low as 9.9 cents to mail each postcard since DCPS is a nonprofit. Figure 10 cents each and that's another $4500.

Figure 10,000 kids actually show up with the postcard on the first day of school (that seems kinda high to me but whatever) and they spend a dollar on each prize. So $10,000 more.

I'm now up to $16,300 and let's round it up to $19,000 for printing addresses and whatever else needs to happen.

For $19,000 you could do some things that could help a small number of kids, but you can't do much. You can't hire another staff member or put a kid in a private special ed placement or renovate a playground. You could reduce aftercare by $100 a month for 19 kids. You could probably buy and install a kiln for art classes, or get the supplies for a garden. You could get a classroom set of laptops and related technology. And none of those would be terrible choices. But sending out postcards is also not a terrible choice. Getting some more kids to come to school on time is valuable, not just for them but for their teachers and classmates. And I'm not sure that the other ways of spending $19k will affect as many kids. Because I'm not an educational expert and I don't spend my career immersed in DCPS. [/quote]

I will eat my hat if DCPS did this for less than $200k with almost all of it going to staff time and/or a contractor with convenient ties to someone high up in the organization. Not that I'm calling for an audit! (that would be throwing good money after bad)

It's just another annoying symptom of the system. Move along.[/quote]

I do this type of work for a living. This is about a 20K job. Not arguing about whether or not this program makes sense. Just sayin' whoever says that it would cost 200K, I'd love to sell you something.[/quote]

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