Before everyone piles on, it’s probably worth understanding the context.
Yes, this was a daft idea, doomed to generate outrage, and outrage is an appropriate response.
However, as the article says, this non-profit was insolvent. This type of non-profit is not flying a CEO around in a private jet. Their entire budget for the year was $400k. Enough for rent, several staff, snacks and art supplies for kids.
The budget was very likely prepared by a volunteer, with limited skills and experience.
It’s often also unclear what an organisation’s total debts are. It’s not at all uncommon to realise an error has been made in understanding an award or something and suddenly the centre owes 5 years back pay for underpaid over time or some such.
Suddenly the centre is insolvent and is required by law to cease it’s activities.
At this point someone has had the misguided notion that the problem can be fixed by coercing parents to contribute towards the debts.
Explaining the problem to parents and asking for donations would’ve been fine, but obviously they wouldn’t have received $40k in donations so it would’ve been unsuccessful.
Tying the request to the kids “art” is just poor taste all the way up and down.
So yeah, it’s offensive, but it’s not nefarious, and while it’s really daft I can at least understand how it happened.
And the $2,200 wasn’t for each kids individual artwork, it was to produce a collective scrapbook from all the kids in the school, plus photos, etc.
$2,200 is still insane on a per-piece basis. It shouldn’t cost more than $50 a piece depending on the size of the book. I could see $2,200 being printing costs for the whole run.
I work in ECE in Australia, and from this
The next day, in a second email the management committee proposed to charge $2,200 for a scrapbook of artwork produced by their children and photographs of them to help pay off the debt.
They 100% mean printing out on the shitty work printer and pasting photos they took on their iPad alongside some pages of the “child’s” (it was probably 95% the educator making it) artwork in one of those $3 black 48 paged A3 scrapbooks from OfficeWorks.
Our kid’s high school did the art compilation book. Hard cover was $150. Softcover $45. About 35 pages or so.
I did particularly like this:
“We did not make this organisation insolvent, it was already insolvent,” the management committee said on Sunday.
Saying that in an indignant Australian accent makes it feel like it came straight out of some antipodean cringe-humor sitcom (FYI “Fisk” is pretty good!).
Maybe but it sounds like the current management committee inherited the problem. I’m dealing with that right now.
I certainly didn’t mean to imply they’re actually incorrect, just that presumably working to fix it was part of their mandate, and the frank admission that they didn’t magically fix everything is kinda darkly funny.
Oh me neither. My wife liked Fisk I should give it a watch
To add to that, it’s in Australia and AU$2200 is about U$1500 / £1100 / €1250.
Average full time weekly wage is about $1,700 AUD before tax.
And due to higher living expenses we end up with less disposable income than Americans.
Considering how little disposable income most Americans I know have, you must be truly fucked.
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Amazing.
Eh. It sounds like the thing is likely going out of business, and people are just batting around ideas to try to bring it back. Probably good odds that it won’t happen.
Craigslea community kindergarten, a local childcare centre in Chermside West in Brisbane’s north, made national headlines this week after a series of emails to parents. The centre has been in turmoil for weeks and was closed after a mass exodus of staff before the school holidays.
On Sunday, the management committee sent parents a 1,000-word email claiming the centre was “insolvent”, owing more than $40,314 to the tax office and employees. It proposed to “wind up” the centre, which has been placed into voluntary administration.
The next day, in a second email the management committee proposed to charge $2,200 for a scrapbook of artwork produced by their children and photographs of them to help pay off the debt.
Maybe the outrage from the story will help bring some attention to the issue, even
America?
Nope, Australia this time.
We’re not having a good time with child care facilities ATM.
Australia
Upside-down rather than backwards, got it.
