Can You Resist the Parent Volunteer Vortex?

This school year, will you be sucked into the (cue scary music) “The School Volunteer Vortex”?

On her blog Late Blooming Mom, 45-year-old working mother Holly Sklar describes her initiation into public school volunteering and the onslaught of all these Uber Volunteer Moms who are clamoring to suck her into her ranks. Two weeks into her kids’ kindergarten year, and she’s already fed up.

In a blog post highlighted on the New York Times’ Motherlode blog, she writes:

I have filled out dozens of forms from the [parent booster] club, not to mention the kids’ teachers, all to do with what activities I can volunteer to be a part of, in the classroom and outside of it, ranging from re-shelving library books to driving kids to and from field trips to helping to organize and run any of the myriad of fund-raising events and activities that occur throughout the year. I’ve been told of mandatory commitments per child at the school, e.g., every family has to work one traffic safety shift, at pickup or drop-off, per child, during the year. I have been invited to no less than four volunteer events, and I’ve already missed two of those. I’ve been asked to contribute the “suggested” amount per child – and nothing that you can pay in ten installments is cheap –  because, though a public education is free, a great one is not — especially nowadays.  Every day brings more mail in the kids’ backpacks, offering additional ways to get involved.

If I get another piece of paper from the parent association, it’s quite possible my head is going to explode.

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If you're a kid in a tough state, your parents are less likely to read to you.

The Annie E. Casey Foundation is a private charitable organization, dedicated to helping build better futures for disadvantaged children in the United States. If you’re an NPR listener, you’ve heard the name. The Foundation just released its annual KIDS COUNT Data book, in which it compiles markers for child-well-being in all fifty states. This is the 2008 data, and overall, things are looking bleak for the youngest citizens. The number of children living in poverty rose to 18% in 2008, before the worst effects of the current recession even hit. The Foundation says experts expect that rate to climb above 20% in the next few years.

Using strong data markers like the child poverty rate, the percentages of infant, child and teen mortality and the percent of children living in families where no parent has full-time, year-round employment (and one questionable data set: the number of children living in single-parent families, arguably not a significant indication of a lack of well-being), the Foundation tagged the worst, and the best, places in the U.S. to be a kid in 2008.

Sadly, history suggests that we don’t care much about this. We’re vastly more interested in the welfare of Bethenny Frankel’s baby than we are in the 1 in five kids in the U.S. dealing daily with poverty. We might skim the story (and we just might not) but we won’t take any action, other than to shake our heads and get on with our days.

What can you do, anyway, if your state’s on this list? Continue reading »

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No matter what you think about being forced to volunteer at your child’s elementary school, a new study published in the May/June issue of Child Development shows there’s good reason to do it.  Students whose parents frequently visit their school cooperate more and have better self-control in class.  ”In addition, children were less likely to be either depressed or anxious,” according to Business Week/Health Day News.

The study followed more than 1,300 children from 10 U.S. cities from birth to fifth grade, and although problem behaviors were shown to be curbed due to parent involvement, student academic performance was not noted to have improved.  But get ready for forced volunteerism, anyway, because according to the article’s abstract, “Implications for policy and practice are discussed.” Continue reading »

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Isn’t it enough to feel guilty for missing a PTA meeting? For not chaperoning one single field trip in the past 24 months? For avoiding eye contact with this year’s room parent?

Apparently not. Some schools want to give you a bad grade for your lack of involvement at your child’s school. Still another wants to require you to devote a certain amount of your time to it.

One small school district in Northern California has a plan in the works to introduce mandatory volunteerism (huh?) to the parents and guardians of its students. They’re not the first.

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In which we take a look at what’s going on outside our own crib.

Meet the Volunteer Mafia. Or should we say Mom-fia? – MommyTracked Continue reading »

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We’re nearly halfway through the school year, and most of my friends and family have logged lots of hours helping out at their children’s schools. We’re all told it’s part of good parenting, and that parental involvement is a huge factor in a child’s success in school.  Plus, there are so many benefits in terms of meeting other parents, getting the skinny on which teachers are good and which aren’t, and generally getting plugged into that network of information that never makes the school newsletter.

Helaine Olen over at Slate’s Double XX is fed up with it all. And not for the reasons you might think. Continue reading »

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Stay-at-home-moms and stay-at-home-dads, you’re just not cutting it anymore. The parent teacher associations and organizations of the world have ever thinning ranks these days, so they’re going rogue.

They’re dropping their commitment requirements to draw more working parents into the fold. Continue reading »

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