Am I Wrong?

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Clarissa

August 16, 2026

My friends, I want to access your collective store of cultural competence as Americans. As you know, my daughter goes to a private school. This means we pay for her schooling. Today I received the following email from the school. I perceive it as outrageous and insulting, but I’m open to accepting that I’m wrong if people tell me that this is culturally appropriate. Here is the relevant portion of the email:

For the ’26-’27 school year we are requiring 10 hours of volunteering/service hours for each family.
a) Engage with staff, administration and PTL to learn about potential volunteering/service opportunities.
b) Hours will be entered and tracked in FACTS
c) Outstanding hours remaining at year end are subject to a fee of $25 per hour.
d) Log into FACTS, go to ‘Family Home’ and you’ll see in the middle ‘Service Hours’. Click ‘Add’ and you’ll be able to enter your hours. Be sure to mention what activity you served/volunteered for in the ‘Description’ section and who at [our school] can vouch for your service/volunteering in the verified by section. Then click Save.

Am I the asshole for thinking this is nuts and probably illegal?

Also, is it okay for people to whom I pay money for a completely optional service to address me in this tone? All of this has deeply Soviet vibes to me.

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4 responses to “Am I Wrong?”

Anonymous

August 16, 2026

It is ridiculous but this is normal for private schools. My son’s school does this too.

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Anonymous

August 16, 2026

it’s completely standard for private schools to ask parents for some degree of participation. But you should have been made aware of this before paying for her schooling, not after.

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Anonymous

August 16, 2026

I don’t know if this requirement is illegal, since it’s a private school that nobody is compelled to send their child to — but it’s definitely an added cost above whatever the parents’ current written contract with the school already charges.

You might consider threatening to sue the school for attempting to breach that contract, and see how the school responds.

Dreidel

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methylethyl

August 16, 2026

The best private school in my hometown (I know parents who’ve sent their kids there) runs this way. It’s part of maintaining the quality of the school: a flake filter. I know, I know, it’s a service that you paid for. Forget that for a minute. Every school, public or private, quality of the school environment depends on the quality and level of commitment of the students’ parents. There are plenty of rich parents who view paying tuition (or frankly, property taxes) as, basically, offloading all the parenting onto paid servants. The more such parents you have at a private school, the more behavior problems you have to deal with, the more entitled whingeing you get from “I’m paying you, that means I own you” types.

This is how even the ‘nice’ private schools in Peru worked, when I still knew people who worked in them. Sure, everyone was paying tuition. But that meant that if you gave that kid a bad grade for poor work, parents thought (rightly) that they had leverage over you: give my kid a good grade or else. Doesn’t matter if the kid learned anything. If they didn’t: you’re a bad teacher.

My friends’ kids’ school requires 20 parent hours per year. That’s why it’s the best school: that 20 hours acts as a flake filter, skimming off a hefty portion of the worst parents.

If you are happy with the school, put in the hours, even if it’s cleaning gum off the bottoms of the picnic tables or repainting parking posts. Yes, they could hire someone else to do it for cheap. But that wouldn’t serve the purpose.

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Clarissa's Blog

Am I Wrong?

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4 responses to “Am I Wrong?”