Thursday, April 14, 2011

Coerced volunteering and fundraising

Remember my frustration with school fundraisers? I dislike them so much that I wish we could just pay more in tuition to not have them.  After all, I don't want to spend $30 on a hanging basket that I don't want just so that the school can get $10. It makes no sense - why not just pay the school $10 directly?  That's my theory.

This weekend the school is having a work party.  They need stuff done both inside and outside and want the parents to come help.  Okay, I get that they need to get stuff done. Don't we ALL need to get stuff done?  If you have a house, there's always a ton of stuff that needs to get done.  And if Julia's in daycare full-time, isn't the presumption that we both work outside of the home 40ish hours a week and therefore have a more limited timeframe to get our own stuff done?  I would LOVE a few hours to work on the yard or deep clean the house. I don't have enough time to do all that on top of everything else in my own household. So why should I take time away from my daughter and husband on my valuable weekend time to clean and do yardwork at the daycare?  Again, my theory is that if they need yardwork and deep cleaning done at the daycare, they should figure that cost in the tuition rate.

Guess where I'm going to be on Saturday?  Grumble, grumble. I'm such a freaking sucker that I said yes, but I'm not exactly feeling warm and fuzzy about it.  S is taking Julia to swimming lessons on Saturday morning anyway, so I suppose it works out that I can go clean the daycare while those two are doing that. He offered to go to daycare while I took Julia to swimming....but the horror of having to put on a bathing suit made me instantly prefer to clean the daycare instead of going swimming.  :/

For the upcoming egghunt, I bought 3 pounds of candy and we stuffed 100 plastic eggs with candy.  I don't mind that stuff because it makes sense to help out with things you participate in.  I'm just not enamored with the fundraising and doing chores for the daycare on the weekend.

Due to the fundraising annoyance, the volunteering this weekend, and the work on the filling of the eggs, I'm going to skip the parent meeting next week.  I'm kind of spent on all this daycare work.  I'd happily pay another $50 a month in tuition if I didn't have to spend the 10 hours a month and buy hanging baskets I don't want.

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