Treasurers

The high school treasurers spent time at their last monthly meeting debriefing after laptop deployment. Here are a few thoughts they would like to offer for next year.

1.Deployment near the beginning of the month (whatever month) might be more effective. Many people indicated they would not have the money until "the first" or later. For that reason, some school treasurers were flooded with parents several days after deployment.

2. Community Service form needs to be revised to have a space for name of the entity at which the community service was performed. There should be a letter on letterhead stationary verifying community service from a nonprofit secular company, church etc.

3. In addition, there seemed to be quite a bit of confusion at the different high schools as to what constituted community service. At one school, treasurer was told to take the form, no questions asked. As a result, things like babysitting little sister, mowing the lawn for mom, etc was accepted. At another school, principal or AP signed all forms and a lot of items were rejected that were accepted at other schools. It would be helpful to define more clearly what constitutes community service and get that information out to parents early (before they leave for the summer).

4. In addition, some of the treasurers felt caught in the middle on community service. Parents would get upset with them because they were denying the junk listed above. At one school, family advocates came to the treasurer and told them the students had done community service and give them a computer, even though there was no form filled out. Etc. We believe it would be better to require principal or assistant principal or counselor approval in advance by including a place for signature on the form.

5. Students should complete a short answer section describing what community service they did, what they learned from it, did they like it or not, etc. There is a great lesson to be learned with community service, but the students need to take time to reflect on what they did in order to learn the lesson.

6. Allowing students to come to the treasurer and make advance payment did not work well. In some schools, on deployment night, parents were not filtered out at the door as to paid or unpaid. As a result, they stood in the payment line, only to get irritated with the cashier when they found out they had wasted time. In other cases, students showed up to get laptops without their receipts, which meant the treasurer had to take time to search back through her receipts to find proof of payment. It was not a widely used process and we would suggest eliminating it. However, if it is used next year, please make sure all communication to the parents indicates that the receipt must return with the child when the laptop is picked up. And, make sure all schools filter parents at the front to insure they bypass the payment line. Finally, consider offering support to the school treasurer during the time period that advance payment is allowed, as it places a very serious strain in their workloads.

7. Many schools sent AUP forms home with kids and they never showed up again. Then, the treasurer had to provide a new one to the student. As a result, at some schools, they ran out of forms. Seemed like a terrible waste of paper to blanket send forms home. We suggest they be sent home on a by request basis only. Some thought may be given to whether allowing students to take forms home lends itself to forgery of parent signature. Should all parents be required to come to the school and sign the form in front of school staff?

8. Need more Spanish AUP forms.

9. The internet opt out is confusing on the bottom of the AUP. Some parents just sign without reading. We suggest there be a separate form for internet opt out.

10. A uniform check list for laptop should be created and used at every school, similar to last year. Parents expressed frustrations when they had to follow different procedures at different schools if they had kids that did not attend the same school.

11. Include treasurers in planning. In some cases, treasurers were given very short notice and very few instructions as to what needed to be done.

12. Currently, some schools are continuing to hand out laptops on Wednesdays or other days of the week. Parents are coming daily to pay. Most don't have their permission slip, so the student must be called out of class, either to get the AUP from them or to allow them to sign it. School staff (treasurer, tech, etc) are now behind on their work. Last year, the students that missed deployment had to wait quite a while and then go to the Ed Center to get their laptop. We would like to issue laptops only during specified "deployment" times and not during school hours. It is difficult during school hours to take care of 50 students in the main office trying to pay for laptops and hand in paperwork while other business as usual continues.

13. All schools must require a completed lunch application turned in to the Nutritional service for free and reduced lunches before the student is allowed to pay $25. In addition, the school should be provided with the prior year free/reduced lunch list. In order to get a laptop for $25, the student must be on the prior year list AND complete a lunch application for current year. The school needs to be notified of students who were free/reduced last year but are not this year, so the additional monies can be collected from them.