Church School Needs You!

When I was a kid growing up in Montgomery, New York it seemed like every year there was a fight over the school budget. It was always too high for some folks, and they wanted to know when we would return to fiscal responsibility by focusing on the three “R’s”: reading, writing, and ‘rithmetic. The group that pushed this idea called themselves the Taxpayers Association and for a long time, the community pushed them off. Civic engagement was high, people voted every year and things went on as they always had. It should be noted that I was completely unaware of any of this, but my parents and others like them weren’t. Meetings were held around my parent’s kitchen table and hard work to keep austerity at bay was done. Until one year, the budget didn’t pass. Now I am still not sure why it failed, but the result was dramatic. There were no after-school programs, sports were canceled or seriously curtailed and the extracurriculars that we kids looked forward to didn’t happen for a whole calendar year. It was a dark time and when the budget came up again for a vote, it was overwhelmingly affirmed. To the best of my knowledge, the district hasn’t rejected one since.

Interesting story right, but why in the world am I telling it to you? Well, sometimes I write letters for me, sometimes for the church, and sometimes for someone else. In this case, my letter is an appeal for our Christian Ed department and in particular, Julie Cutler and Elizabeth Webber. They’re the two wonderful people putting together curriculum for our kids, finding people to serve in the nursery, and making sure that among many other things, our kids learn how much God loves them. The issue is they need more help, and the reason is because our program keeps expanding. As Deacon Deb says, that’s a high-class problem. The reality for us is that with the number of kids in our program we really need six to eight people per week to help, but we rarely get that many. When that happens, plans get changed, classes get condensed, and our kid’s learning suffers. From time to time, as sad as it is to admit it, we’ve even canceled Sunday School because we simply didn’t have enough help on a given Sunday. This may not be school budget dark, but it stinks all the same. The great news is that there is a solution…

If you would volunteer to help once a month and we had a decent pool of folks who also decided to volunteer, we’d be set. We could affirm that we think our Christian Ed program is important and give it the attention it so richly deserves. Julie and Elizabeth will provide you with all the curriculum help you might need in order to help our kids learn, have fun, and grow in faith. We also need help with shepherds who make sure our kids get where they need to be etc…if teaching isn’t your thing.

My guess is you might have questions and if so, I am happy to speak with you or direct you to Julie and Elizabeth. Oh, and who am I writing this letter for? Well, me, as a parent of course.

OTJ,
PG