The Brownells

The Brownells

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My phone won't let me post pictures on this blog, so I actually have to sit at a computer (which I do very rarely).....So, I post all of our pictures at www.thebrownells.shutterfly.com

About Me

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I have a husband and a puppy. I love one and am obsessed with the other. I'll let you figure out which is which. I love my job, my house, my students, my cheerleaders, and my life. I guess you could say things are going pretty well... I teach high school English and coach cheer. Husband is a video game designer. Guess which one the future Brownell babies will think is cooler...

Tuesday, August 2, 2011

Cheer Fundraiser

The money thing for the whole state of California is actually beginning to cause me to lose sleep.  I am lucky enough, that money isn't a regular concern at home.  We live comfortably and I don't really stress about day-to-day expenses.  My cheer team's finances, on the other hand, is going to literally kill me.

The ACLU recently settled a case in CA where they stipulated that schools can no longer charge for an activity or sport.  They can merely request donations.  Now, this lawsuit began when 2 cheer parents from a low income school sued about a decade ago.  The idea was that by asking for donations, sports would be opened up to all kids.  Sounds like a great plan.  BUT, what they forgot about is the fact that the low income kids won't make the donations (not because they don't want to, but rather that they can't), so it just TOTALLY screws the low-income kids out of everything kids at other schools have.  This year my kids didn't get to go to cheer camp, don't have uniforms, briefs, heck they don't even have cheer shoes.  Now my low-income kids are going to feel even worse when we play against a team with decked-out cheerleaders who aren't affected by this new law (since their parents will glady make the "donations")  It's just really widened the chasm.....

Now, I know this sounds like I'm just sitting around whining about my poor, poor students.  Well, I agree, that is what I'm doing.  Although I do this while we do a ton of fundraising.  We've made about $10,000 just this summer alone.  The unfortunate thing about that is that that just barely paid off what we spent last year.  Apparently I would make a horrible accountant.  Actually it's because the girls all signed a contract promising to pay last year, but then several got wind of this new law and decided they didn't have to pay.  But, they had already gone to camp, ridden the buses, competed, etc.  The money was already spent and now they don't have to pay it back.  I think this is actually just teaching the kids a HORRIBLE lesson.  You can get stuff for free........

We have done tons of car washes, sold candy, sold cookie dough, sold snacks at school, sold newspaper subscriptions, sold pies, run a firework booth.....I'm out of ideas!  We have asked literally every business in Westminster for donations, but we get the "in this economy...." kind of reaction.  I have had a family member offer to buy poms for my girls, and that seriously took off a lot of pressure.  My sister and I are going to make bows this weekend, but that's another cost for me.  And remember, I VOLUNTEER to coach.  It costs me THOUSANDS of dollars every year to volunteer.  What the heck???  We have to pay for buses to and from football & basketball games (it's district policy that they can't get themselves there, but then ZERO funds are provided to cover the thousands of dollars that we have to pay for the school buses...arg!).  This whole thing may drive me over the edge!

I mean, what kind of world do we live in where a teacher, who already doesn't make that much money, is sent one of these every summer?  I mean, ya, we get the summers off, but we surely don't get paid for them!
Yes, teachers buy MOST of the stuff your kids use in the classroom......


Anyway, if anyone actually does read this and
1. knows a company that is just SEARCHING for something to donate to (for the tax write-off)
2. knows a really rich person who is just SEARCHING for something to donate to (for the tax write-off)
3. Knows of an amazing fundraiser that I haven't thought of yet....
please let me know!!!!!

Go to www.westminstercheer.shutterfly.com to see their adorable faces!

I'm not above working, begging, pleading, and am getting close to being ready for stealing.  OK, not yet, but almost. Help!

(and for those of you that are sick of hearing me whine, sorry!!!!! and, thank you for listening!) :)

6 comments:

Jen said...

Totally saw this on FB yesterday Kris--WTF!!?!?!

I had no idea it's gotten so bad. Like, when I was in HS, it was a given that we basically had to pony up the $$ for anything we had to do. That meant uniforms, rifles, sabres, shoes, etc. I can't even believe this...I mean, I get that it comes from a good place, to include everyone, but crap, that's rough. I remember too--we also had the option of choosing to fund raise ourselves through the program, or basically buy out and pay up front. Can they not do that anymore either?

ANYWAY. Apparently this ish is now happening to VHS's guard. So their instructor kinda got creative, and he created a FB event and a website where anyone can make donations, and then sent the link out for the word to spread to alumni, alumni parents, etc. It's um...not going really well, as far as I can tell, but it might be SOMETHING to get ANY money? Man. How depressing.

You can check out what he put together here:
http://www.vhscolorguard.com/

Mrs. ummmmmm......Brownell said...

Jen - It's totally getting crazy. The AD at my school said that he's not sure we will be fielding all the sports this year AND that maybe our football team will just play in home games and not travel. The craziest thing is that most of the other schools in my district aren't even phased, it's just been insane at my school. I'm super stressed!

Erin said...

I don't have much of a solution but I do have a fundraiser idea that I've heard nothing but good things about-Quarter Mania. It's an event and there are expenses, but if you can hold it in a place with no fee (your gym or multi purpose room?) and have things donated (might be easier than a lump sum) perhaps it could work. The website is awful, but it explains it.

http://quartermaniaparty.com/

Is your principal supportive of you? If they are involved in other civic organizations like a Rotary or Chamber perhaps they can suggest willing businesses who have a stake in the community to donate prizes. I can talk to you more about it on Sunday.

Emily Heizer Photography said...

Because I am dumb, and you are a teacher, I need more explaining about the new law please!

I had to re-write this like 3 times so it didn't sound idiotic. (Sorry if it still sounds idiotic though...) I think I know my question now though. lol How were all of those things: uniforms, shoes,ca mp, buses, etc., afforded in previous years if the squads were made up of low income kids who couldn't afford to pay to begin with? Where did the money come from then if the girls were the ones who had to pay?

What about writing a letter to the ACLU saying that your low income school can't afford anything now because of the law THEY helped put into practice and what are THEY going to do about it? (It may be nothing, but you can write a nasty note.)

Also, email your local news stations and say how your school has been affected by the new law and how it has backfired. Lots of news stations have features paired up with the local community- here it's called "Call 3" for channel 3 news and they focus on local injustices- like a contractor who didn't finish his work and stole money, graffiti at schools, underserved programs. Whatever. Contact all the news stations and tell your girl's story and how hard they have worked. There's usually a specific contact and feature for that. Also tell them you wrote the ACLU. Social injustice pisses people off if you take it public!

You could also try doing a rummage sale (only standard thing I see missing) and make everything you have already done an on-going thing. When school starts again you could also stick a box of suckers or apples or whatever on your desk and sell them to the kids for the squad. My photo teacher sold us cup of soup in his class...

You could also try (this is kinda out there) opening an etsy shop in the name of the squad, make the girls your little child laborors and have them make something to sell. There's overhead there, but that can be an on-going source of income. I don't know what you'd make- scraves, hair things for little girls- but I'm sure there's something. On Etsy it only costs 20 cents to list an item and that's your only cost.

When I was in cheer we sold tickets and raffled off a CAR at a football game once.

A facebook fundraising group or fan page(past and present cheerleaders and alumni can hop on that!), a blog for the squad where you heavily document their activities with a paypal donation button on the sidebar- ESPECIALLY if you get picked up by the news this would be important to have in place. If they have a website they can send viewers to check out and follow the squad, and you have links set up already to make donations, become a fan on facebook, and also run sidebar ads through google, all of that will help. If you can't legally post pictures of the girls, you can post pictures of their activities, pictures of cars they wash, craft projects, pictures of the school buildings, and backs of heads should all be legal. Technically, as long as you're not selling the images you should be able to post images online of minors without any risk, but since you're a teacher/in a position of authority and parents may or may not be comfortable, there are definitely ways to still have a blog with lots of pictures without including pictures of the girls faces directly.

Emily Heizer Photography said...

If you do decide to set up a blog (with a fan page button on the side bar, paypal donation button on side bar, and google advertising in between posts on also on sidebar, all moneymakers and word-spreaders- I use all of these for my business) and want help, let me know. My work and personal blog are just hosted by blogger, but I have gone in over the years and changed the html settings to widen the page, made custom headers, I can make it so you have special font for blog post titles (you can do it for the body too but it makes the page load slower and sometimes hard to read so I don't reccomend that) to make it look more professional and polished. I can make you a button to for other people with blogs to put in their sidebars to advertise the blog if you want.

Just lemme know. That's something I actually can do!

Mrs. ummmmmm......Brownell said...

@Erin - Lets talk Sunday! (You're right, the website is pretty bad!!!)

@Emily - I guess I didn't make that clear, did I? In past years, the girls knew that they had to pay in order to cheer, so pretty much only the people that knew they could would try out. It was much higher pressure. I could actually make someone sit out of a game or something if they didn't pay. Plus, the school signed the PO and I was able to order the uniforms. It's much easier to point at the actual uniform and be like "you have to pay for this" then to just tell the girls they have to pay and may get uniforms if we earn enough. The school district sent a letter out to EVERY kid in January basically telling them they could play any sport and that uniforms and so on would be by donation only. But then, no one offered coaches a way to come up with the money. The activities director told me that I could buy a team set of uniforms and then just have the girls "rent" them for the year. BUT, then didn't tell me how to afford those 35 uniforms. Obviously that would be more than ideal....

As far as writing a letter to the ACLU, pretty much every district in CA is on that. The problem is that they didn't give much info to the schools yet, and in turn, our district hasn't given the schools much info. So, the directive was basically for my school not to sign POs and not to spend money. For a spring sport like track, that's fine since this will all get worked out eventually. For something like cheer (which is not even considered a sport, which brings up a whole trove of funding issues on its own) it's really a problem since our season starts in like 3 weeks.

The other problem with doing fundraisers is each group has to go through the activities office just to make sure that there isn't already one going on that week, etc. The PTSA at my school does a rummage sale like once a month, and already called dibs. Because EVERYONE is in such a tight money crunch, they take their fundraisers and hold on for dear life! We can't help at the snack bar at football games because that's the football boosters. Same goes for Basketball. We cheer at these sports, and thereby need buses to get there, but we get no monetary support or help from them. It's so frustrating.

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