On Students Selling Junk

Dr. Steven Taylor over at Poliblog has posted a copy of one of his op-ed columns on school fundraising and I couldn't agree with him more. I have always felt that it was a waste of money to buy the overpriced trinkets in order for the school to receive a small fraction of the selling price.

There are other fundraising efforts that bother me just as much or more even. Have you ever had your child bring home a booklet to fill out for magazine sales? You are expected to supply the names, addresses and (maybe) phone numbers of TEN close relatives so that they can be solicited to buy magazines. Just what your family wants, right? Selling them out to telemarketers. I told my son that maybe we should call up those relatives and tell them to give us a donation for the school or else we'll give there information to the telemarketers. (We ultimately did not participate in the fundraiser.)

If your child is in band at school it is even worse. They are bombarded with all the school fundraisers and the band fundraisers. The one for band that irritates me the most in the Boston Butt sale. All band students are required to sell three Boston Butts. The first year my son was in band we bought one and sold two more to neighbors. There are supposed to be fully cooked, ready to eat Boston Butts. When we received ours and brought it home, we found that it was FAR from fully cooked and was, at best, half cooked. If I was going to have to cook the stupid thing my self, I could have bought one much cheaper at Wal-Mart. The next year I refused to buy one and told my son that he could tell the teacher he would not be selling them in the future. I sent a note to school telling the teacher that neither I nor my son would be involved in selling half cooked pork.

I remember when I was child trying to sell junk to my grandmother, she would always ask if she could just give a direct donation to the school instead. I think that the schools should make this an option for the children so that they could still feel like they were participating in the actual fundraiser but not have to sell junk door to door.