Saturday, January 26, 2008

Box Tops For Education


OK, so pre-PTA I was completely clueless about this whole thing. Clip box tops? What? My son is in 2nd grade and this is the first year we have ever clipped these babies and turned them into the school. And only because we are doing a school wide push to earn stuff with our box tops money.
You can find these little babies on practically EVERYTHING nowadays. I had no idea. Not just on cereal boxes like they used to be. On my kids fruit snacks packages, on Goldfish cracker packages, cake mixes, Kleenex boxes, Ziploc bags, and even girlie products. {for a whole list go here} It's crazy! Anyway...I've gone through every product in my house tearing off these labels {if I could} and sending them off to school with Landon. They are worth a mere $.10 each, so it will take a lot of them to even get to $100. And, unfortunately, $100 doesn't buy what it used to. Sigh.
So, start clipping ladies! Your school could use the money. If your school doesn't participate in this program...send me your box tops! Our goal is to have the students bring in 5,000 box tops by Spring Break. If they can do it, we're giving them a prize. Some sort of assembly {it's still in the works}. I know, I know...5,000 is a lot of little box tops, but it only amounts to $500. And, with us using every last cent we earned this year from fundraising going towards the new shelves for the library, that $500 will be used to get all the stuff that we couldn't.
BTW...I'm so pumped about these new shelves. They are going to be beautiful. We're short about $3000 for it, so Spring Carnival here we come! BUT...it will be well worth it. I'll post pictures after we've started installing them the end of February/beginning of March. YAY!
Honestly, after this year of PTA-ing...I now realize all the things the district DOESN'T pay for. It's rather frustrating. So, though I HATE fundraisers {the kind where my kid has to sell stuff to unwilling buyers} they are more needed than I realized. The playground balls for kids, electronic equipment, music program stuff {you'd be surprised how much they have to come up with on their own}, SHELVING! I will now be a sucker for life whenever a family member asks me to buy something from their school. Sigh.
I think I'm done ranting about this now. Have a happy weekend. Go clip some box tops.

5 comments:

Bonnie B. said...

I also HATE fundraisers. When my kids first started Harrison, the PTO pres didn't like the door to door sell stuff kind of fundraisers. So we had a Math-a-thon. The kids would get pledges for the # of questions right. There are 50 questions. So if you pledge 10 cents a question, that's only $5. Anyway, the kids were trying to get the most money raised, so they could get a trophy. Every year since Madi has been there, they've raised over $10,000. Now we have a new PTA pres, and in addition to the mathathon, we have those stupid catalogs to sell from. I hate those! And just wait till the Rotary club comes to your school. They make the rounds to each elementary school, and put on a pancake breakfast to help raise money. That usually brings in quite a bit, too. Good luck with raising money for the shelves!

Victoria said...

Gotta love a girl that gets geeked about shelving! It is awful how much stuff schools, and even teachers, have to buy on their own.

Alicia said...

Ashlee you inspired me, I went around the house and cut all the box tops and Campbell's labels so Reagan could take them today, I was impressed how many we had.

Sister Honey Bunch/Judi maloney said...

I am all for just writing a check to my son's school and not peddling or clipping anything. Is that so wrong?

Ashlee said...

Alicia...YOU ROCK! BTW...Smiths is having a HUGE sale on cereal and fruit snacks that have the Box Tops label on them. 8 for $10. Not too shabby!

Honey Bunch....do you want to write a check out for my school? I would do that in a heartbeat too, but there are so many that wouldn't unfortunately. And then we'd get nowhere. I hate "peddling" just as much as the next mom, but have seen just how necessary an evil it is for our schools. :0)