I had to shakedown local businesses for the yearbook. We just made them all a small ad, but charged $100 to make it bigger and $50 to take off the "sucks donkeys. "
We sold donuts so we could afford to go to the National High School Chess Championship in Philadelphia.
Sometimes I doubt your commitment to Sparkle Motion.
2: The fact checkers are questioning this. How could you have sold enough donuts to pay for the bus tickets and hotel rooms?
Ok, fact checkers, you got me. Yes, we raised a little money selling donuts, which we split up among the people that went to play in the tournament in Philadelphia. But for the most part, each of us paid our own way.
Richard Nixon supposedly financed his first run for Congress with the proceeds of wartime poker winnings. Which is the sort of just-so story that journalists love and therefore presumably nonsense, but maybe you can encourage the kids to knock over a casino or two?
I don't see why you should find your situation so very challenging to overcome.
When I was a kid, I did fundraising for a senior year class trip, the prom, and the French club trips. I don't remember fundraising for regular extracurriculars or other stuff but I wouldn't expect to at this point. It seems basically like you're talking about but maybe a bit less of a racket. At 7, Atossa is too young for us to be directly involved with stuff like that through her school, but she's got swim class, guitar lessons, and gymnastics class paid for straightforwardly by us, and Cub Scouts and Girl Scouts on the fundraising model.
I'm curious how this sort of thing works in other countries, if at all. I know extracurricular activities for kids are less of a big deal than they are in the US, but that's not saying much.
We funded prom with a "slave auction." The juniors were auctioned to work for 8 hours for whoever bought them. Everyone was really white, so I guess no one worried about the name. My dad bought me and I had to spend a Saturday updating the Northwest Reporter.
It was a remarkable insight into how much of a pain it was to update things before the internet.
I hate fundraising stuff so much. My high school sold band hoagies to raise money for the annual festival competition. That was okay, but you know, we could just try funding the arts like we do sports.
We sold B-2 bombers to fund sports, because the Air Force could get more.
Sports do the fundraising thing too! The extent to which it's required seems to vary a lot by sport in ways that are pretty opaque to me though.
Do other countries do this? Sometimes I think America really is scams all the way down.
Pokémon Go is the only pure sport left.
15: I was curious about this myself. I'm pretty sure lots of other countries have privately-funded extracurricular activities for kids but I think they're rarer than in the US, and I'm pretty sure that funding them by taxes or fees paid directly by the parents are more common than with fundraising activities like we're talking about here. But I don't know how much rarer they are (e.g. 90 percent as much participation on average, or 10 percent as much?), I don't know exactly how rare the fundraising model is, and even when it happens I wouldn't necessarily call it a scam. I'd agree that a lot of what we're talking about in this thread is, but there's some genuine services provided and learning experiences gained occasionally.
If extracurriculars are tax-funded - which I'm sure is more common in most of the developed world than in the US but still not the case for literally everything - great. If they're funded by parents paying directly, it sucks for everyone who made the wrong choice of parents.
Probably one part of this is that other countries have fewer organized extracurriculars? The "you need to do lots of extracurriculars to get into a top college" thing is basically unique to the US, right?
18. Yes, unique. I think also "I have to get the kids into sports because otherwise they'll have free time for trouble" is an American speciality.
Also increasingly scarce opportunity for socialization when most friends live multiple miles away?
Nothing against sports--exercise is great to start early in life, sports really can help build character, team sports need a place to play which costs money. But disentangling those positive aspects from the existing reality that most public universities are sports franchises with an underfunded library attached and now just contract faculty who best know their place, I don't know how to do that.
18: Sure, if we're talking about organized sports, but I know scouting associations exist in other countries and at least some fundraising activities seem likely. I know youth religious groups exist (again, less important than in the US, but not literally zero); are they all funded entirely by either the church or parents directly?
I think even in the US explicitly religious youth groups tend to be funded by the churches. The fundraising thing started out with independent nonprofit groups like Scouts and seems to be seeping further and further into schools-sponsored activities.
I think also "I have to get the kids into sports because otherwise they'll have free time for trouble" is an American speciality.
I have to get my kid into a sport because it the alternative is screen time or fighting with me over screen time.
In Berlin (west, not that it particularly matters), our kids have been involved in:
* Church youth groups -- church-funded, except for travel
* Team sports -- baseball, parent-funded; concession stand was probably a net fundraiser for the league as a whole, volunteering expected that worked out to about one shift per season; brief triathlon team experience never progressed to requiring much money or any travel; ditto ice hockey
* Dance club -- run as a business external to the school and thus paid for
* Orchestra -- school club, instrument required, otherwise school-funded
* Individual sports -- run as clubs/businesses external to the school and thus paid for; there was a partnership between the elementary school and a sailing club that allowed a year or so of inexpensive participation with a club-provided boat (an "opti" for people who follow such things)
* Music lessons -- city-run school, instrument available (maybe nominal rent?) for the first year purchase of own instrument required afterward, tuition subsidized
Some kids are deeper into club sports (particularly field hockey). There the junior teams are affiliated with adult clubs. I suspect it is parent-funded, probably subsidized somewhat by the senior clubs, who are looking for younger talent.
German schools do more travel with classes than American schools do. This has been parent-funded, which has occasionally been a sore point, as we live in a very well-to-do district but earn only modestly. I am aware of fundraising for some class trips, but have not been called in to participate.
Berlin does not provide free textbooks to students. This reflects poorly on German civilization, and is high on my List of things that I will fix on my first day as Kaiser. Ditto school libraries. I am told this is not true of all 16 states in Germany.
I have to get my kid into a sport because it the alternative is screen time or fighting with me over screen time.
We don't police the twins' screen time all that much but they keep getting into more and more sports anyway. So far this hasn't been much of a fundraising burden but more of a time burden. Track meets last forever!
Are the church youth groups through official state churches? (I.e. funded through the tax system.)
A big thing for US soccer fans is to complain about how the US "pay-to-play" system has held us back compared to Europe because it puts more emphasis on having rich parents than being good at soccer, and that the European system with junior teams affiliated with adult clubs who care more about developing talent than on bilking the parents do it better. The various MLS academies have made a huge difference here in the past decade or so, and US development now is much much better.
26: Track meets last forever Have you ever been to a kids' swim meet?
I did that as a kid. Took ages, but we had virgin jello shots.
You mean jello? Or, I suppose, tiny cups of jello?
Have you ever been to a kids' swim meet?
I have not. I have no doubt they're worse.
30: We called in "finger jello." It had extra gelatin, so you could grab it with your hands.
What's nice about ski meets is that they have the starts timed down to the second so you can just show up for your own kid's race. Track meets are... not like that.
I know those as Knox Blox (made with Knox
gelatin). My college coop would make them for scheduled, preplanned food fights. We were a wild bunch.
You can add vodka, if you want to touch vodka while consuming it.
What's not nice about ski meets is that they're outside in the winter and the races themselves are quite long. It's a trade-off.
Are the church youth groups through official state churches? (I.e. funded through the tax system.)
I just went down a rabbit hole learning about German state payments to churches, persisting since apparently 1803, proposed to be eliminated in the Weimar Constitution, never implemented, and that unimplemented promise was incorporated verbatim by reference in the Bonn Constitution. (Separate from the tithing German citizens can voluntarily do through the tax system.) Apparently they don't think it's constitutional to end any the payments without making a one-time payment of about 20x, so they can earn the same indefinitely at the 5% rate of return. But how is it just to pay them in perpetuity for property they lost once?
37. They stole from God, why would you deny each generation the chance to atone?
I know about this because when I registered when I was living in Germany you have to tell them if you're protestant, catholic, or neither, so they know how to deal with your taxes.
Puzzling through the no-English-counterpart Wikipedia article, it seems the payments are basically down to Napoleon - some of it is compensation for church land he expropriated adding now-German territory to France itself, more of it for those many little church-states that were agglomerated to French-ally states under the Treaty of Luneville around the same time. The settlement with the churches implementing that was called the Reichsdeputationshauptschluss, or Principal Conclusion of the Extraordinary Imperial Delegation, where "Imperial" means the Holy Roman Empire.
CC what the hell is going on with Rep. Zooey Zephyr there?
27.1: Yes.
37, 40: I did not know anything about any of that. It makes a certain amount of sense, in that Weimar took on obligations left by the Empire, and the BRD took on those same obligations as a mark of continuity. The organized churches still have a lot of behind-the-scenes power, despite church attendance far, far lower than, say, the US. For example, they have worked together with the labor unions to ensure that nothing as civilization-destroying as opening bookstores on Sundays is permitted under national law.
I went no further than the introduction of the first article. With the second, I got to wondering why there is a bahasa Indonesian translation and left the rest to Palmerston and the Prince Consort.
Speaking of puzzling German legalisms, a little while ago I learned that German civil law has a special category for organizations that are older than the codification of German civil law.
agglomerated to French-ally states
Or to non-allies as compensation for Napoleon or his allies taking their territory to the west, I think. I'm fascinated there was a principle that when the victor took territory from the defeated, the victor had to give something in compensation - not something equivalent in value, but not token either. For example, Venice being given to the Austrians as compensation for losing so much else of Italy in Campo Formio.
My sister much preferred swim meets to track meets. At least the swim races were at a known start time. Track meets were all day long and there was no saying when a race would be run.
Track meets were all day long and there was no saying when a race would be run.
Yeah, it's not so much the length (although they literally are like eight hours long) as the vagueness about when anything is going to happen and the last-minute changes. Plus the races are so short that you can easily miss seeing your kid entirely if they suddenly switch them to an earlier heat. So you have to wait around for hours to watch a race that lasts less than a minute.
The twin who isn't doing track is threatening to join baseball as revenge. So far he hasn't followed through though.
Oh yeah. My nephew's coach required all his athletes to be there at 7:30am to spend the whole day. My sister basically knew/decided she was there the entire day. I don't know that I'd have her dedication, but she also liked the other parents and the scene.
I liked that they gave you a blue card, about 8" by 2.5" that you could fold so that it was a pac-man mouth.
I just want to note that HS track meets are nothing like this, at least not the ones that are one school against another one. The events happen in the same order every time, and there are few if any multiple heat events, so the timing is very predictable.
At least that's how it was in the '80s in NJ. The only event I did was one of the first, so I got it out of the way and then just hung out cheering for friends or reading in the bleachers. An excellent system.
I have heard that there is a different kind of meet that is just two schools and those may well be different. Both of the ones I've been to so far have been big long multi-school though, and there's another one this Friday that seems to be the same. I think one complicating factor in Alaska is that early in the season it's too cold for outdoor meets so they all happen in this one big inflatable dome facility, which probably constrains the scheduling a bit.
At the first meet I went to they were also doing soccer games in the dome at the same time. It was crowded.
If the dome was like the parachute, you need lots of kids to sit on the edge to hold it down.
It appears to be anchored somehow. It did collapse once a few years ago, and there's a disconcerting number of patches in the fabric, but it seems to hold up okay.
41. Sorry to be so late. She told the truth and the "Christians" can't stand it. We were all set to reappoint her if she was expelled.
The Republican rank and file can't help themselves. The Governor, while he's a "Christian" himself wants this to be over, but isn't spending enough political capital to make that happen.
It is such a shitshow. She's my (very good) representative and the republicans are behaving so catastrophically badly.
Since she's my own representative, there's no one I can call to badger about it. Not that I think it would do any good, anyway.
Last fall, I asked my state representative to vote for himself. You'd think the people who built the canvassing list would have left him out, but no.
He promised me he would, so I didn't even ask him if he had a plan for how to vote.
Probably the creation of competitive stay at home moms.
Repeating the same process as Doug above, xelA does (or has done) the following:
School trips: we have to pay, but it's often a nominal fee of a few pounds to cover bus hire. Same with things like visiting events from children's authors, workshops with theatre companies, etc. where they may ask for a voluntary donation.
Judo: outside school, paid for by us, but the club is very much run as a non-profit / labour of love and has been around for about 70 years, so the fee is about $5 USD a week and they go to a lot of lengths to make the club inclusive -- lots of girls training in headscarves, kids with disabilities, etc -- while still giving the kids a good grounding in slamming MFs into the mat.
Tennis: outside school, paid for by us, at a local LTA affiliated tennis club. We pay about £10 a week for lessons. They also run various free match play sessions, etc.
Music: in school. The school organises and hosts the lessons and they take place during school hours, but we have to pay. They recently switched from using the local authority provided music service to using a private company. The fee overall hasn't changed by much, although the lessons are not as good. We also pay the local authority for the hire of the instrument.
Cricket: in school, but provided by a private club. We pay, approx £5 a week.
Swimming: in school, free. We also paid for private swimming lessons, but those are temporarily on hiatus.
Running coaching: we are paying for specialist coaching, it's quite expensive, I don't think we'll keep it up for long, although it quite clearly works (much better technique, etc).
Football: outside school, paid for by parents.
It adds up to quite a lot (300-350 USD a month or something like that, for everything).
Several of xelA's friends play for pay-to-play commercially run clubs: where they are funded by parents, but are often competitive entry, and some of those clubs are of a very high standard and will sometimes play against the academies of professional clubs as part of various league and cup competitions. Those are very definitely businesses, but I don't get the impression the fees are insane. It's hundreds of pounds per year, but that includes a lot of matches and training sessions. I think the clubs rely on scale to make money, because some of them have hundreds of affiliated kids. Parents do the heavy lifting in terms of logistics, though.
Some of his friends play for the academies of professional clubs. In that case, no money changes hands, although parents still have to ferry them to training sessions, etc.
What seems to be missing is these sort of "fundraising" scenarios where instead of parents paying directly for their own kids, instead the parents pay for other people's kids through some weird scam fundraising so some middleman can syphon away some of the money.
Did the Midway people even consider how much I enjoy making a teabagging joke when they got rid of the Nuts on Clark store that used to be on the A concourse?
There's a "Nuts on Clark" machine, which suggests the robot overlords are being trained on John Yoo's memos.