PTOchair, I think that our district pays for our volunteer background checks. If this is new for you, you could gather all the perks of parent involvement and convince your board of ed that it is in their best interests to pay for these.
Since my last post on this subject I have became Recreation Director! I am so happy cause I can use that $12.00 per hour. That's pretty good money around here. If I were an aide I would get paid $5.99 per hour because I am classified. Last year I made $5.83 per hour, and when I first started being an aide I made just a little over min wage.
Because our 21st Century grant allowed us to have before and after school day care at our school, ESS is now only for children that need a little extra academic help. (It's always supposed to have been that way). It is divided up K-3 on Mondays and Wednesdays and 4/5 on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Friday is just for recreation, everyone gets to come. There are some kids on a waiting list because a teacher is not allowed to have over 12(?) kids. I love the way it is set up this year as opposed to years past because the kids can have more one on one time.
We are trying to start up this type of program based on something I heard about at the PTO Show. We are planning on paying the volunteers $20 per week for a one hour, once a week, four week program. Depending on how many students the volunteers are willing to have in their classrooms, the price will vary. FOr instance, say a volunteer accpets 10 children into the class, and there are no additional supply costs, each child would pay $8. But if they think they can handle 20 in the class, the cost would only be $4 per child! So far I have "collected" volunteers for stamping, sewing, writing, chocolate lollipop/candy making, gymnastics, aerobics, possibly yoga and a few others. The teachers were thrilled with the idea! Many of them wanted to volunteer for it! We'll see if we can get approval from the school board to go ahead with this. Now with new laws, the volunteers will have to be background checked and fingerprinted, I will have to figure out the cost of that when the time comes!
Our districts receives a 21st Centuary Grant. We have enrichment activites once a week for 6 weeks. So far with this grant we've had gymnastics with a college student for an instructor, Yoga, Tae Kwon Do, and a Crafts class. Certified teachers are paid $50.00 and classified instructors are paid $30.00 per day.
I would also like more information on the after school programs you offer. We have girlscouts once a month in the gym, and one teacher started a math club for her class after school. But I would like to see us do more. Our community has alot of parents who speak spanish as their first language or only language so I would really like to start something for these kids and parents. Any ideas?
I'd love more details. How much do the kids pay and what do you pay the instructors? Do you have some kind of sign up and contract? Do you break even or make profit? How and where do you hold all the different courses? Was it complicated to set up and run?
I have talked to several parents who were disappointed that there aren't more academic options for their kids during the summer. Right now our school district really only has help for Title 1 reading students and the AEA offers courses for gifted students, but if you have a child who doesn't qualify in either area there is nothing. It would be great to do something during the summer, and maybe we could work this out with the school district, but if we could at least offer something like this during the school year that might help. Our local YMCA/YWCA has after school daycare, but I'd love to see some reading, math, science activities that kids could attend right after school. With all the budget cuts, we keep losing resources for kids who need extra help, this could alleviate some of that.
Our PTO, and several others in our school district, run an after-school enrichment programs for elementary age kids. It is self-supporting and doesn'r require any funds from the state or school budgets. It has been very popular and the kids have the opportunity to learn things they might not get during regular class time. We find parnets, tachers, and professionals from our area to come in after school and teach things like cooking, tae kwon do, languages, sports, etc. We pay the instructors and the students pay a fee to attend the class which is where the money for instructors comes from. It's a great way to get parents and the community involved.
