AIBU to wish the school would stop asking me for stuff

[StopAskingForMoney]

So DS1 has nearly completed his first term at school in YR. The school is great, teachers are lovely, they're great 99% of the time the only issues we've really had are minor in the grand scheme of things (letting all the parents turn up to school to then tell them at 9am it's not open due to a 'issue' and to bring them back at 12, to then get a text at 12 saying the school is closed due to a sewer issue they've been trying to fix since 7am, Forgetting to open the school gate because they 'forgot')

The issue is In the last three weeks alone the school has asked for;

Nursery rhyme costume - £12
Donation for nursery rhyme £25
Raffle tickets - £10
Christmas play costume - £20
Non-School uniform donation - £5
Christmas hat and jumper - £15
Raffle tickets again - £2
Parent present buy they're getting the kids to do- £6
Another Christmas fair raffle - £5
Fruit or Veg donations every week

They've also now asked for us to donate things like balance bikes, wheel barrows, lego etc! The money they raised from the school nursery rhyme challenge was going to be used to get something that benefitted all the YR children. They brought a bike shed, just for the YR children, never have I ever seen a YR child ride their bike to school, the majority I'd say at least 80% of the YR parents drive to school, so it doesn't benefit all the children.

There is also talk about donating to the church, Now people are wanting to do a club together to buy the stuff for the teachers.

AIBU to want them to stop asking me for things! I have no money, I don't want my kid to be the only one sticking out but I can't afford it! I don't get why they want money every week for something! It's right on top of Christmas and half the time we'll get a letter in the book bag asking for things to be in by the end of the week, It's stressing me out!

We live in the USA. Our DC attend public school (state )

Since September I've paid for the following:

School supplies $125
Sept donation for classroom equipment $15
Oct donation for classroom equipment $15
Sports tshirt $20
Choir tshirt $15
Event sponsorship $40
Christmas gift swap $5

So that's $235 times two as we have two children in the school. It doesn't include another $150 for school photos and yearbook or $25 for PTA membership. None of which are mandatory but are strongly encouraged.

The tshirts were apparently optional but I received multiple reminders and the DC were put under pressure to have one so it didn't feel in any way voluntary.

The sponsorship was also apparently voluntary but they really hyped up who had raised the most with the kids and there was a prize for the child with the most raised (I donated the minimum)

So it's roughly $600 since September.

I'll also (happily) put in for teachers' and bus driver's Christmas gift.

I was asked to contribute to the teacher's lunch and also teacher Christmas cookies but politely declined those.

We've also had 12 dressing up days since September.

Yr R, we've had:
Cin, £1 wearing spots (luckily i had the spotty clothes)
Nativity outfit £8
Trip:£5
Cake sale for R £3 (though i bought not donated)
Topic dressing up £10 outfit
Raffle £1
Drink for tombola £4
Over £32 in 3 months not including xmas fayre.
Also school photos.

Its not just the money but the remembering. Almost something every week. So it gets confusing what/when.

Shocked about how expensive secondary is. I will need to get saving

this is nothing to do with school curriculum stuff for the most part and also there are ways and means to sort things - it is the biggest shocker when your kids go to school is the weekly requests for something or other and you need to learn to be thick skinned and cheeky. Much of this looks like the PTA kinda fundraising so it goes like this

play outift - ask teacher if there is anything in school that "will do", or ask parents of older kids if they have them leftover from other years, I started a FB page so we could share and share alike outfits etc.

Jumper day/hat day - buy a bit of felt and cut something out and put on jumper if crafty, buy in sales, get hand me downs from others, look out for cheapies in charity shops etc. No one cares its all a faff and most of them are ordered begrudgingly from amazon as no one has the time to sort. Hats try and get something to be used again

Raffle tickets - no thanks and send back unless you can palm off on someone else, or buy a couple yourself IF YOU WANT TO

Get the head to set up text alerts or parent mail or similar there is software out there for schools they need to be more on the ball. Having said that sewer issues is just one of those things - I could say shit happens ha ha ha

In terms of influencing what they buy then get your self on the pta and get squeaky. I suppose they needed a bike shed before buying balance bikes etc. Also if you are organising you are seen as contributing... they wont miss your raffle money etc

I would also make a point of speaking to the school and being clear about how un inclusive it is to constantly have specified stuff they need to buy or wear - so having a mufti day instead of dress up is far more cost effective and you don't begrudge the donation if you haven't had to pay out for an outfit

Thankfully we had a sensible head and the expectation was you "made up" outfits rather than bought and that was OK

oh and cake sale - 6 cakes is fine, supermarket is fine. If all kids took 6 cakes they would all have to buy 6 and eat 6 and that is way more than enough so someone somewhere aint giving - so 6 used to get sent from me

sorry that reads as if I mean 6 big cakes - I mean fairy cakes

standard here is :

non uniform days - £1 each
dress up days, there is always a suggestion as to how to do it yourself at home.
I have never with 3 kids through primary, never ever bought anything new for a dress up day. I can sew though, and we do make stuff out of paper and paint, and I collect plain coloured T shirts and legging and a bag from jumble sales and hand me down bags, so that when we are suddenly asked to come dresses as the colours in the Indian flag, I can usually find something in the bag.

Raffle tickets - £1 each, sell as many as you can, many parents send them back unsold.

trips etc (like your nursery rhyme thing) £25 would be a veyr expensive top wack trip.

Christams jumpers, yep this is a horrendous new thing in UK, buy it too big, make sure it does 2 years, pass on to younger siblings.

I would do 2 things.

1. stop feeling that you need to buy everything they send home. You are free to say no.
2. write to the school and send them the list you have put above, tell them you are shocked at how much you have had to fork out in one term. I find that often schools don't realise the total and how it is for parents. I once stopped the head and told her something similar, plus for me it wa stimes 3. There was a change after that.

Where did you buy your Xmas jumper from?? I usually pay £3/£4 for my kids'

Stop buying raffle tickets

Don't be so precious about what he wears in concerts, a friends DS wore a t-shirt inside out once for a play because they couldn't find a plain one in the right colour
No-one noticed it cared, there's a lot of kids and people are only looking at their own

Paying for a non-uniform day is a donation - ie, not compulsory

Seriously you're making this harder for yourself than you need to

Stuff like Christmas jumper day will probably follow your dc through school for the next couple of years. Get yourself on eBay or buy on in the January sales for the next year .. or try charity shops, like you said there only worn for a few weeks so they are usually in really good condition.
£5 for non uniform is horrendous!
Fruit and veg.. either go to Aldi/Lidl or your local market stall. The veg is just the same.

Don't know about Scotland but in England a private school and a public school are schools you pay for and a state school is free to use. not really a question of people getting "up in arms" or "caring that much", it's just what the words mean. Anti-intellectualism gets on my wick. Fair enough you didn't know the definition but now you do.

Bit like someone saying "oh, you call it margarine, well all my friends call it butter, it makes no difference". If it's margarine it's not butter and you wouldn't say "I'm still going to say butter, nobody will care".

As another poster said it is strongly emphasised on what you should donate. I already gave one example of the raffle tickets and another parent which shows it's not that easy to say no.

Parent fair they go buy you a present every child is called out and taken to choose something for you to receive in the hall.

Christmas jumper/hat was not a non school uniform day, once again you had to hand in the jumper/hat they then gave it to them to wear in the afternoon of the day.

We do have text alerts, however they didn't send them for the sewer although if someone knew about it at 7am they had just under 2 hours to notify us parents!

We've just had a text from the school it says. Children can come In wearing non-school uniform in exchange for donation.

They have trikes/balance bikes they already have a place to store them.

TBH butter/margarine all the same for me so I would, I've got more important things to worry about then public/state schools and butter/margarine others call them public school so meh who cares.

Christmas Fair tomorrow with more raffle tickets sales, I haven't brought any cake, so I won't now. We've now been asked to make or buy snowflakes so it's a no to that as well.

It can get crazy, luckily my dcs school is in a very non affluent area with lots of kids registered for free school meals so they know they can't ask for much.

Just a little tip for those finding xmas jumpers pricey. Tesco are selling long sleeve xmas t-shirts/sweat shirts for £4

DS is at a private (fee paying) school - we have paid £2 once a term for non uniform , have one costume a year to find on world book day (i fashioned a pirate out of bits and bobs and called it long john silver) and donate to a class collection at xmas/end of year for teachers presents. I gave £5 for teacher and £5 for TA last year - no idea what others gave, they got john lewis vouchers which i thought was so much better than everyone getting a chocolate orange or whatever.
However, of course the school is less cash strapped than state schools.
I am sure the rest i the parents can't be coughing up that much cash without complaint.

"TBH butter/margarine all the same for me"

Wash your mouth out with soap

Nickname If a recipe says butter you can count your bottom dollar it's gonna be the flora/can't believe it's not butter out the fridge haha

*butter/margarine

You have spent £100 in 3 months for school activities

Thank God my dd is now in year 8. This year we have been requested to send in £1 for Red Nose Day (Non uniform day), £1 for Children in need (Non Uniform day) and a strip of raffle tickets - £1 - for some fencing the school needs to erect. All concerts have been done in school uniform. Tickets for entry £2 each. Under 5's free. No under 2's allowed (Thank God!) But that's another thread ;)

Are you sure your dc attends a state school? The amount you have been asked to contribute equates more to a public school. Flippin' 'eck! I cant see any parent round here donating that sort of money

I am 10000000000000% positive he attends a public(state) school It's ridiculous but I'm going to talk to the head and dodge any talks regarding anymore money that they may ask for before the 16th!

Seriously you're making this harder for yourself than you need to

Yup-raffle tickets, donations, sponsorship, cake sales-all optional. The costumes could be found at a fraction of the price.

If they are actually telling you to pay £5 for non-uniform (every school I've ever taught in has been £1 absolute maximum-usually 20/50p) then I'm amazed and think you should name and shame the school.

This will probably make the Daily Outrage by tomorrow as it is, so you might as well go the whole hog!

Well if you can't tell the difference between butter and margarine then I shall end this conversation here.

please say you know the difference between bought and brought

roll as I said they handed the raffle tickets back more then once! I'm not a confrontational person so It's hard to avoid that! The costumes couldn't at our local shop that sells them for when we needed it.

desolate I don't think I've ever had anything other than I can't believe it's not butter to be honest, I generally thought they were all the same.

Yes, I brought something to the party and I bought something from the shop...

You need to be more assertive op. They hand you the tickets back and you say 'Sorry I've asked family and neighbours and no-one wants to buy any' and repeat each time they try and give you them. Maybe add a comment about people not having much spare money so near to Christmas.

Sometimes schools need to be made aware of the full picture. Perhaps you drawing their attention to the number of demands will help.

"However, of course the school is less cash strapped than state schools" No shit Sherlock!

To me, public/private school = parent pays fees, state school (where I work, and where my dc go) = non fee paying.
Afaik, state schools provide free fruit to all KS1 children, which covers reception age until the end of year 2, which may be why some people are questioning why you are still being asked to send in fruit etc, and if you are, then your DC are at a fee paying school, in which case, other costs may be expected too.
At the state school where I work, we had a meeting this week stating that LSA's would soon be expected to do class cover due to the budget not looking good in the near future and then having to scrap their PPA cover teachers to claw back costs. Or else they are looking at having their hours and therefore their pay being slashed to accommodate paying PPA wages.
We have been advised that lights should not be switched on unless ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY, and even then, possibly not all of them, to reduce electric costs. The heating is switched off at 1pm to reduce costs.
Staff are 'encouraged to layer up'.
School budgets are being cut left right and centre.
It does have different effects based on whether you are at a fee paying school or a state school!
I'm surprised you've never encountered these different terms!

Why are your school asking for fruit donations if it's a state school?

nhs free milk

Something about this doesn't ring true.