The best way to know what’s happening in our schools is to volunteer. Parents are often invited into classrooms to listen to young children read, help students of all ages with art or science projects or to assist librarians, the office or other adults in the school. Seniors, community leaders and others also step in to assist.
Here are a few numbers* that interest me:
**If a person spends one hour a week helping in a school, that equals 30 hours during a school year.
**If every student in a school of 400, had one adult who stepped in each week, that would equal 12,000 hours of support a year for that one school.
**For one high school we’d quadruple that to 48,000 hours a year. ONE school.
Think across one district, one county or one state.
BUT…
Hold onto your calculators for this next one!
If, every students in the United States (public and private students alike) had the support of one adult, for one hour once a week that equals:
1,644,000,000 hours
That’s One BILLION, six hundred forty-four million HOURS of support.
Our students deserve our best. 30 hours a year isn’t much to ask. Many people spend that much time watching TV in one week or driving to work every two weeks.
That kind of support for education would be astronomical and would go a long way toward improving our educational system.
* these are based on education enrollments as of fall, 2014 figures