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FAQ about the Student Development Fee...
Dear Rockwell Families,
As our deadline for the student development fee fast approaches, we wanted to share some additional details about the fee, and to answer some frequently asked questions:
Why are you asking families for this money? What is this fee being used to pay for?
Every year your Rockwell PTA pours tens of thousands of dollars back into the students and teachers at Rockwell. Historically, we give around $30,000 - $40,000 to our teachers and school in the form of academic grants, stipends, and enrichment opportunities. Most succinctly, we give money directly to the teachers and specialists to help support the academic and emotional well-being of all Rockwell students. (For those who might be new to the American educational system; public schools here are drastically underfunded. Teachers and staff rarely have the funds they need to fully support the unique academic needs of each child in their classroom). The Rockwell PTA pays for additional books and supplies inside the classroom (each teacher makes request to the PTA for the unique needs of their classroom and students), we pay for some field trips, we help fund salmon in the classroom education, we cover the costs of author visits, through stipends we help pay for specialized programs like running club and orchestra, we provide financial support for Math in Action, we pay for the art docent program, etc. Last year we funded âcalm down kitsâ for every single classroom in the school. Last year we also helped to fund a recess reboot program at the special request of the Principal and Vice Principal. Your Rockwell PTA also hosts and funds a number of exciting school community events throughout the year, including: back to school picnic, Heritage Night, STEAM night, movie night, Rockwell Spring Musical, the ice cream social & art walk, field day, Reflections art contest, etc. Please be reassured that every penny of the student development fee is invested directly into the Rockwell students and teachers.
What if this fee is a financial hardship for my family â will my children be excluded from PTA activities?
Absolutely not. We regret that our messaging on this issue was not more clear from the beginning. We understand that the fee may be difficult for some families to afford. We have never and will never exclude a family or child from participating in PTA sponsored or funded activities. If youâre able to pay the student development fee, we appreciate the financial support. If youâre only able to contribute a portion of the fee, we still deeply appreciate the support. If youâre not able to pay the fee at all, we will still invest in your child(ren) and their classroom and will not chase you down or send follow-up individual requests for the fee. If youâre not able to pay the fee by the deadline, we will still accept payment throughout the year, on our website. We have a Sept 29th deadline because we are required to present our annual budget at the first general membership meeting of the year (in just a few weeks). We need to know now how much money we have available to support our teachers and students throughout the school year, so that we can create an accurate annual budget. That being said, we accept contributions throughout the year so that we can continue to support additional programs and requests into the Spring.
My old school asks for a different amount â why are you asking for so much?
Every PTA runs different programs and supports their school community in different ways. Your Rockwell PTA has a very close relationship with our school staff and we try to fund AS MANY âasksâ from our teachers and staff as possible. Your prior school may not have had such an active and robust PTA as Rockwell.
Does the PTA do anything to help support families facing economic hardships?
Yes, absolutely. We have a close relationship with the school counselor and regularly check in with her to make sure we know how to best support our families in need (to be clear, the names of families who work with the school counselor for additional support are always kept confidential, and only the school counselor knows their names, even when the PTA provides them financial support).
Here are just a few ways your PTA supports families in need at Rockwell: we run an annual gift card drive that raises thousands of dollars for families during the holidays, we have scholarship funds available for the after-school enrichment programs and scholarships to cover tuition for the Spring musical, we help purchase yearbooks for families who cannot otherwise afford them, we have funds available to purchase eyeglasses for students who cannot afford them, etc.
If you have suggestions for other ways we can support our families in need, we are always excited to hear new ideas, so please reach out: president@normanrockwellpta.org.
We know a lot of you have questions about the student development fee. We hope weâve answered them here. If not, please continue to reach out. Your Rockwell PTA has an open-door policy. We want families to be actively involved in the decisions we make, and actively involved through volunteer hours that support the programs and events we run.
We hope youâll come to our first general membership meeting of the year on October 26th. At that meeting we will present a line-item budget that shows exactly where we plan to spend the financial contributions from families this year. Please join us!
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