The steep climb

(and more on why we DIY our fundraiser)

This is a quick post to say THANK YOU to everyone who has donated so far to our Support Our Schools fundraiser. We made it to 12% of our $20,000 goal by last Monday, and now we’re a little north of 30%—which is awesome, but also leaves us with a steep hill to climb to get to $20,000.

Can you give $10? $20? Click here, and thank you!

Running DIY fundraisers—and I’m not doing much this year, just writing messages for teacher newsletters and helping to organize a kids’ craft sale—is really a lot of work. Many other parents (mostly moms) are filling spreadsheets with information about the donated raffle prizes (thank you, McIntyre’s Books! thank you, Pittsboro Toys and so many other places!), the business sponsors (thank you, Chatham Pediatric Dentistry, Cari Filer Studio, FIT4MOM, and Country Farm and Home!), the fun events we’ll have at the celebratory Fall Fest. And our wonderful teachers and principal are also highly involved, working overtime to run the pep rally, spirit week, and to organize fun whole-school activities.

This would surprise my kids, but before we started this year’s fundraiser I was thisclose to suggesting that we just go back to Boosterthon, the private company that handled our fundraisers in the past. It would surprise them because I hated Boosterthon and the way its slick corporate structure put pressure on kids to sell sell sell, just so they could get some junky plastic toys. It seemed wrong to me that a science-focused school (we’re a STEM school) would bring in boxes and boxes of ocean-bound plastic. And the tiered, competitive system bothered a lot of us—the more you earned for the school, the larger the prizes were. But I worried—I’m still worried—that we won’t make it to our higher goal this year.

It’s frustrating that we have to run this kind of fundraiser at all. Shouldn’t all schools have access to a nice, safe playground? Garden boxes? Sports equipment? It’s not lost on any of us that the charter school we often drive by (where Harriet and Bea went to preschool) has a huge, children’s museum-quality playground (surrounded by a high fence). I’ve never seen it, but I bet the charter school on the other side of the fancy neighborhood has a swanky playground too. Both of these schools, as charters, are free and lottery-based, but because they require a lottery application, knowledge of their existence (often word of mouth), and lack other services (like school lunch and bus service, at least at Willow Oak), they have a wealthier base of families. According to the most recent Department of Public Instruction report to the General Assembly, NC Charter Schools continue to serve an average of 30% economically disadvantaged students, while traditional public schools serve 37%.

This data—stark as it is—obscures what charter schools in more affluent communities like ours have, which is a high percentage of wealthy families (and, my guess would be, far fewer poor families than the statewide numbers show). They’re able to have silent auctions for things like beach house vacations and luxury spa sessions, and they raise far, far more from these families than we can raise.

But we have:

Socktopuses large and small!

And Harriet’s Very Fancy phone and tablet shop!

And probably a lemonade stand, kid-made-ceramics, and a very wonderful native plant sale, led by Deena Class, our PHS native plant expert.

All happening this Friday, September 29, from 2:30-6:30 in the front/upper parking lot at Perry Harrison Elementary. Proceeds benefit the SOS fundraiser, and every native plant you buy will buy another for our school!

I’m planning to fill out our gardens with plants Deena recommends (she’ll have deer-resistant ones and great advice for newbie gardeners!). If you’re a local reader, I hope to see you there! If not, you can show us a little love from afar—we never ask for paid subscriptions, but reach out once a year on behalf of the girls’ small-but-mighty public school.

Overall, I think the kids benefit from our DIY fundraiser. Harriet, in kindergarten this year, has never perused a glossy booklet of rewards or nagged me to upload an app. She won’t watch videos of Dude Perfect, the YouTube stars who are this year’s Boosterthon partners. She doesn’t even know what a YouTube star is!

And guess what she dressed up as for “career day” during spirit week?

Can you guess? :)