Parents ‘n Schools

To me, one of the deepest tragedies in government schooling is the potential energy of 1 million parents (in Alberta alone) being frittered away on fundraising to add a single penny to every taxpayer dollar (in addition to the upwards of 20 pennies charged in fees).
I believe that energy is of much […]

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 (GLO — June 2010 — From a couple years ago… as far as I know, little has changed…)
Perhaps you remember the Field of Dreams line “If you build it, they will come.”
In government schooling, as regards things like playgrounds, I believe the line has been altered to “if you DON’T build it, […]

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In my observation, the primary ways parents are “involved” in government schooling are raising money (fundraising) or writing cheques (school fees).
How much in Alberta is raised for government schooling by parent fundraising? It is hard to know. Nobody seems to count. We can perhaps hazard a guess.
A survey of largely rural […]

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(GLO — March 2010 — I have been writing at good ol’ PnS for two years now this month, and this is an early essay. I contend that if government schooling… which has placed itself as one of the largest “charitable” entities around… were obliged to conform with ACTUAL charitable entities and their financial disclosure […]

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(GLO — Feb/10 — When fundraising dollars in small or large amounts hit school council bank accounts the “independent wisdom” of parents becomes severely tested in the world of schooling. They aren’t generally encouraged to do their own research, to offer their own guidance or to embark upon their own initiatives. They are more often […]

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(GLO — February 2010 — Isn’t it… eerie… how school budgets are revisited every year, but what parents are asked to pay for generally always stays the same? How choices are made and remade, but turns are never taken? Such is the nature of “big partners” vs. “little partners” in the big-time “partnership” of government […]

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(GLO — January 2010 — From about one year ago, this essay reminds that the best way to learn how any system, business or enterprise works is to follow the money. Where it comes from. Where it goes. That generally illustrates its real reason for being. The schooling business, I submit, is no exception.)
“What […]

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[GLO — Nov/09 — Written one year ago, this essay captures the inequity in funding elements of government schooling as among parents ‘n schools. The problem is not so much that fundraising is allowed in and around government schooling, as it is how its existence and occurrence is incorporated into the management of government schooling […]

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(GLO — August 2009 — Look back in September 2008 archives for this first of a three-part series of entries discussing the challenges of fundraising by parents on behalf of government schools, and the challenges regarding how that type of involvement in school funding is structured and how well, or unwell, that structure protects and […]

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(GLO — August 2009 — This from a year ago draws to mind another comparison that I’ve drawn elsewhere related to “class size”. If schoolers were granted the share of resources that their parent “partners” were granted — i.e., if the roles were reversed — it would be like working with a class size of […]

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