I thought I paid taxes for that…

V’s been in school for 2 months now, and in that time we’ve received the following requests to fork over cash:

• class pictures – this one I expected, and the prices seemed reasonable
• id cards – some bs scare tactic they sent home trying to get us to get these ID kits made (guess where I stand on this one!)
• magazine sales – they weren’t really clear on this, they gave no date as to when to return it, but there’s a whole catalog of magazines I can subscribe to and then never read. And maybe I’m supposed to guilt friends, family and neighbours into buying them too, as there appeared to be a whole laundry list of crap that V could win if ‘she’ sold a certain type or volume of the rags.
• movie night – where we’d get to sit on the gym floor in our pjs. Right, I’m too old for that, after 2 hours on a wooden floor I’d seize right up.
• book fair – this was actually tacked on to the meet the teacher night. It felt very much like exiting through the gift shop.
• french book fair – yet another plea for some wonderful service that they’d no longer be able to provide if I didn’t fork over some cash.
• popcorn – I had a really hard time with this one. I see it as the slippery slope to them selling her all sorts of pizza and hot dog crap lunches on one hand, and on the other I didn’t want her to be the only kid that didn’t eat the popcorn. So I caved. And she didn’t eat the popcorn with her class, she brought it home (this month) to her dad. And as I suspected, there was only one kid that didn’t get popcorn in the whole class. Next year there will be two.
• buy a muffin for…um I can’t remember what program they’re supporting (this one gets better, see below)

I’ve also been asked to:

• bake muffins – yes, the very ones they’re now going to sell to me? I’m baking a dozen for them to sell.
• do some reading – once or twice a month head in and read to the kids or organize activities
• help the milk program – once a week, hand out milk for the milk program, or monitor a lunch room
• make playdoh – make a batch for the class. I think I signed up for doing this in March.

Can’t wait until they ask me to pay for a kindergarten ‘graduation’ cap and gown. It ain’t going to be pretty.

EDIT – Just to make me lose my ever lovin’ mind, they sent home the cookie dough fundraiser forms yesterday. My daughter has been in school for 8 full weeks and we have received 9 requests for money. NINE!
Don’t get me wrong, I know these aren’t all fundraising for the school, but the sheer volume of requests for money is insane.

11/16/11 EDIT2 – This week brought TWO more requests for money – Monday was money for Clementine in the classroom (since apparently they want to do this fundraising one dollar at a time and today was ‘spirit wear’. These are both fundraising. No specific goal in mind, and the Parent’s Council meeting minutes don’t really indicate what the money is for. This will need follow up for sure.

11/17/11 – Our 3rd request for money THIS WEEK, 12th over all:

And then my head exploded

11/21/11 – First request for money this week, good ole’ #13. And this one is a free fair. So again, we have to donate the ‘new or gently used’ items/crap and then send in $1 for V to select something.

11/21/11 – I should also note that all these requests do not include the scholastic books catalogs that come home every month – so there’s another 3 requests.