by app-garden | May 23, 2016 |
As a way out of their dilemma — higher expectations on one hand and lower resources on the other — many school districts can supplement staff with volunteers. They have successfully tapped into the expertise and enthusiasm within their communities to supplement their resources. According to a report issued by the Corporation for National and Community Service, “parents of school-aged children contributed more than 2.5 billion hours of their time to volunteer efforts in 2011, most of it to school-based projects.” It is not uncommon for districts to have one volunteer for every three or four students in the schools.
At all grade levels, parents are involved in tutoring or teaching in the classroom, providing clerical support, coaching, chaperoning school trips, and supporting fund-raising activities. Given budget constraints, it would be difficult for most districts to support these activities without volunteers. Funding to pay for extra teachers, coaches or administrators is not available, and the schedules of the current administrators and teachers are full. As one school administrator explained, “without volunteers, it wouldn’t be easy to do field trips or manage PTO activities, and our classrooms would be stretched.”
Ease the budget burden and supplement staff with volunteers by joining the App-Garden today. Our Volunteer Tracker is a cloud-based volunteer management program that helps make your job easier by keeping up with volunteer information!