Quote:
Originally Posted by delphine 
Did the school your children attend have a mandatory volunteer program?
What did it involve?
Was this for parishioners AND non-parishioners (this would apply to Catholic schools only, I think)?
Was it tied in to your tuition rate?
How was this documented?
I'd also love some feedback from other parents. What do you see as pros or cons to this type of program?
If anyone has any links or documents that describe such a program, I'd love to see them.
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My children attend a "choice program" at a local public school. The core principle is parental involvement--all families sign a contract stating that they will contribute at least 80 documented hours per family (25 of those can be 'all school' hours--meaning that you can apply up to 25 hours of helping with PTA events, volunteering in kindergarten class since our program is 1-6 grade, volunteering in the library at times other than your child's class, ect.) each year. In addition, each family must serve on a committee that helps run/organize/support the parent-driven/led enrichment activities that we fund and put on, or support the running of the organization as a whole. The committee job plus classroom volunteer times adds up to 80 hours pretty easily for most people.
Since this is a public school program, there is no tuition, but being a choice program does allow us to contractually ask for a $200 fundraising committment each year from the families. This is used to support extra enrichment and classroom supplies.
Each family has a hours report form (either paper or we also have an excel document) that they keep track of all their hours and submit 3 times each year. At each turn in there is a target hours amount. This is so people realize when they're falling behind, so that the parent participation folks can support and help families that don't seem to be getting enough hours in finding ways to make it up, and so nobody gets a nasty surprise in June (when the school year ends). If a family does not meet their volunteer hours and doesn't ask for a ardship waiver or communicate with the board about making a plan to make up hours or how they will do better next year they can lose their spot in the program (and they sign a contract each year that outlines that procedure, the deadlines, the expectations, ect.)
I love the program. Obviously, or I wouldn't have chosen to enroll my kids in it. To be really honest with you though--I am not sure that this is the type of thing that could be imposed on people who enrolled with no expectation of it. We have many dual-income and quite a few single parent families in our program, even though it is 80 hours a year. We try to provide at-home hours as well as in-school hours, but again--the focus of our program is parent support in the classroom so that we can provide extra enrichment and instructional support for our teachers. So people with no interest in volunteering aren't going to apply to our program nor would they last very long since noncompliance would result in them getting kicked out essentially. It's amazing the benefits that the kids reap from basically getting very small group adult interaction. It is a pain in the ass to fill out the form, take lots of volunteer time to keep track and is stressful for the (volunteer) board memebers that must make the phone calls/send letters to those who aren't meeting their hours and work out a plan...but it's hard to get around doing that because of the fairness issue.
I think you need to ask the director of your school some hard questions about this.
*What are they willing to impose as consequences for non-compliance? If there are none, you'll just have a few people doing the heavy lifting and then resentment will grow as some people will consistantly blow off their commitment.
*Is the school willing to either devote the resources to tracking hours/imposing those consequences?
*Will there be any kind of transition period, since they're going from totally voluntary to required?
*Do the teachers buy into this plan (this is the MOST important question I think)?
I will PM you the link to our school's program. You should be able to see our parent handbook, contract, and bylaws in the "documents" section. Keep in mind though that this is a *parent co-op choice program*. It may not be at all what your director has in mind. So I would ask for some vision guidelines. I would say that mandatory volunteering in the 20ish hour range, as long as there are at-home as well as classroom opportunities will not be a big deal. But if you are looking for more hours, realistically for that kind of investment people are going to want the *benefits* of a co-op (more say in things, to be doing valued work, ect.) if they're going to be asked to take up the burdens of one.
And keep in mind that there are MANY teachers who do not *want* a lot of parent involvement in their class. That takes an investment of their time as well (training the volunteers, worrying about consistancy, giving them things to do), something a lot of administrators and parents aren't aware of. What happens to parents who really want to volunteer, but the teacher doesn't have many slots? This is something that needs to be thought about.
Again, I am absolutely thrilled with our program. However, I've seen it not only as a parent but also as a board member, and I am on track to become the board president the year after this year. I racked up over 160 hours, the majority of them NOT in the classroom, in the process of helping to administrate and run a program like this. It's a lot more work than a lot of people realize (esp. if they're never on the board). Even if this initiative is going to be run by the staff and it's a lesser amount of time, I would say that you should still anticipate that it's going to take some time (probably more than anyone things) to set up, implement, and run--and people need to be prepared for some pushback. Worth it in the end, IMO--but it's not going to be for some people, especially since this is changing the game mid-stream, and you can't fault people for being upset about something they did *not* sign up for.
