Why do schools need to fundraise, anyway?
It’s going to get worse:
Note: don’t ask me why the government graph is janky:
This 2.3% for education is further broken down:
Teachers, who are underpaid themselves, can only do so much:
Enter the PTA, who can give money to other special interest areas:
But why the candy grams???
They might do the same things over and over because they don't have any input with a new perspective.
Perhaps, the PAC at my kids school seems to be very low on critical thinking and empathy. Very frustrating people.
I suspect they still do this because the PTA is run by former popular girls who always received a lot of candy grams. They don't see a problem with it, and hey, if a kid is left out, that's the kid's fault, right?
Info is a bit skewed, see the original source for more data: https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d22/tables/dt22_207.40.asp
That’s the issue right there. Where I am, the PTO is made up of rich, bored housewives who were the popular girls in school and don’t see the true impact something like this has on a kid, and have no knowledge of how schools or classrooms work.
Info is a bit skewed, see the original source for more data: https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d22/tables/dt22_207.40.asp
You are an extremely good person and I would encourage you to figure out who is planning this event (school? PTA?) And join the committee to find a better fundraiser that doesn't exclude children. I have heard from different corners of the internet that sometimes the PTA is a real viper pit and sometimes it's just a few people who are doing the best they can to keep things going.
Hopefully it will be people who are open to alternatives and not married to doing something because we've always done it that way for the last 50 years and if you change it I'm going to have a big meltdown on a Facebook group
Our PTO talked a good talk at that first meeting about making sure no kids got left out. So when they launched the fall fundraiser they picked a company that awarded a prize for just signing into the website, no purchase necessary so every kid got something even if they didn't sell anything. Maybe it was just an oversight and they didn't realize that apparently lots of kids get left, at least according to this thread!
In my PTO group we try to make sure things like candy grams aren't done, specifically because we do not want kids to feel left out.
It’s wonderful you’re including all the kids in this! In your place, I’d send an email to the PTA or whoever is organizing this pointing out everything you’ve said here. It’s possible they never considered kids feeling left out and if you can get them to reconsider next year, you’ll avoid having to buy a class-worth of candy grams every year while your child attends this school.
Sources:
(1) https://carolinemaguireauthor.com/help-a-kid-who-is-being-ostracized-feeling-left-out/
(2) https://www.responsiveclassroom.org/how-to-talk-with-parents-about-cliques-and-exclusion/
(3) https://afineparent.com/positive-parenting-faq/social-exclusion.html
(4) https://psychcentral.com/health/why-feeling-left-stings-and-healthy-ways-to-cope#why-it-bothers-you
(6) https://www.apa.org/monitor/2012/04/rejection
(7) https://gsdrc.org/topic-guides/social-exclusion/causes/exclusion-based-on-social-status-or-identity/
(8) https://www.mcleanhospital.org/essential/bullying-kids-teens
(9) https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1368214/full
(10) https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22889163/
(11) https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0190740924000148
(12) https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1184924.pdf
(13) https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6085085/
(14) (https://conversationstoremember.org/loneliness-and-isolation/#:~:text=Loneliness%2C%20on%20the%20other%20hand,of%20a%20hostile%20social%20environment.)
(15) https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022519321003581
(16) https://elifesciences.org/articles/78246
(17) https://educationdata.org/public-education-spending-statistics
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