A Working Mom's Rant about "Parent Participation"

My son’s preschool had a large Harvest Festival during school hours last week.  It’s two action-packed hours filled with a petting zoo, a pumpkin patch, face painting, cookie decorating, a bean-bag toss, and (the kids’ favorite) a jumpy house.  The festival is probably the biggest event for the school and relies largely on parent volunteers.  But this year, the festival nearly didn’t happen.  Less than one week from the event, not a single parent had signed up to volunteer. 

The Director sent out an email signed from “your child.”  The email was written in the voice of a child talking about how much they love the festival and how it may be canceled this year since no parents had signed up.  Even when the Director pulled the guilt-card and gave an ultimatum to cancel the event, by Friday only half of the slots were filled.  Pull at my working mother heart strings!  I feel guilty enough about sending him to preschool all day long three days a week.  Now I have to contend with knowing that if I don’t volunteer that the beloved Harvest Festival will be canceled.

I put my name down for TWO slots that very evening when I picked him up from school.

My son goes to a preschool located on-campus at a top-notch university in Silicon Valley.  Because the tuition is subsidized by the University, the school requires each family to volunteer five hours per quarter. Roughly that equals 1 hour every two weeks. If you are married, that would mean that each parent would only need to volunteer 1 hour per month.  For schools that require volunteer hours, I’d say that the requirement is nothing.  So why is that parents have a hard time stepping up?

Last year, I joined their Board of Directors to design a new website and some other marketing material for the school.  The time I’ve spent on that project (going on 15 months) has given me a free pass for volunteer hours for two years.  I don’t feel like I should have to volunteer.  Frankly, I’ve already put in my required hours plus some.  Where are the other parents and why aren’t they pulling their weight?

Here I am a full-time working mother who is juggling way too much.  I bust my butt at work to ensure no one ever puts me on the “mommy-track.”  I volunteer at my son’s school to redesign a website - something I’m not totally skilled at but no one else was willing to do.  And now I have to pull even more time out of my schedule, during work hours, to paint the adorable little faces of the children at my son’s school; knowing full well that there are families that haven’t signed up for their fair share. 

I know that I have 13 years of education for Darius that is staring at me in the face.  I'm not sure that I can handle 13 years of picking up the slack for lazy parents.  Please tell me this gets better.

Comments

[Nicole]

At least you'll be prepared for elementary school :) I've never been asked to volunteer at a preschool, just for the occasional $5 donation. I guess they assume if we had time our kids wouldnt' be there, who knows. But elementary school, is constant requests. Thank goodness we eventually get enough parents, and dad does enough volunteering for two. My standard response has become "whatever I can do from home with a computer, sign me up."

[Dina]

I'm so with you! My daughter is in pre-K and I'm trying desperately to help them with their technology and communications, and would be more than happy to give some evening time for their website, setup email lists (I wouldn't dare push them as far as a ning site, they might not even know what that is!). But, I know that even though I will try to help them in the evening that there will always be things I will miss (or have to skip work to not miss) that will be right smack in the middle of the day. Not that I don't want to be a part of my daughter's experience at her school...but please not always in the middle of the day!