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Michelle Wegner
For Moms and Dads in Michiana, the first week of school consists of filling out forms for this and that: newsletters, permission slips, PTO announcements, registration emergency cards and then the obligatory emergency backup cards for the emergency cards. Every parent of a student attending school that I talk to says the same thing: “The waste is enormous,” and “How am I supposed to know what’s important?”
A few years ago, when my two oldest girls were in 3rd and 4th grade at Horizon Elementary in Granger, I sent them squeaky clean and off to school with new backpacks, folders and lunch boxes.
I was waiting for them when they got off the bus that day, and as I watched them stumble down the bus steps, I saw they were both lugging very heavy backpacks strapped over their teeny shoulders. I took their bags, brought them inside and found masses of paper in each girl’s shiny new school folders.
I counted over 40 pieces of paper between them, and it was only the very first day of school. I literally spread the paper out on the floor as a place to start. My then three year old was chasing the dog; the papers were flying everywhere, getting torn up and muddy in the chase. I was already an overwhelmed mom with all the activity in my house. With these papers stacking up into mountainous piles, I was more than overwhelmed.
I sifted through that first-day-of-school pile as quickly as I could in the after school-before dinner hours, placing the ten or so forms that said return immediately on top of the pile. The other 30 or so papers sat in a file box. That box grew from 30 papers the first day to 200 pieces of paper by the end of the week and 400 by the end of the first month of school. None of these papers were from actual class work or homework. Kids need paper to write on at school. I get that; but these papers were reminders of the reminders that were sent home the first day, advertisements for upcoming events, fundraisers and a whole lot of stuff I don’t remember.
To create a visual for my friends and family on my personal blog, I had the girls spread all the papers from their first month of school across our front lawn for a photo. The paper covered most of the yard. I was astounded.
It started off as a silly idea for a blog post, but as we were doing this, I was wondering just how many trees would be cut down over the next few years to stuff my girls’ backpacks with endless forms and redundant announcements. I also wondered just how much money it would cost to print off 100 pieces of paper per child per week of school. I was sure that would be the equivalent of a small fortune – and that’s just for two children attending elementary school. Just two. I thought to myself that there had to be a better way to get really important information to parents other than filling up kitchens and landfills with useless information.
The blog post and photos of all the paper got quite a lot of local attention. One teacher I forwarded the post to said, “I am stunned. I knew we were sending home an awful lot of paper, but I had no idea.”
In her book “Less Clutter. Less Noise.” local author Kem Meyer says,
“I have two kids in school. It takes me 10 to 20 minutes to sort through the handouts and flyers sent home with them every day. It stresses me out. I’m trying to live my life, and it feels like someone else is taking control of my time and my kitchen counter by overwhelming me with clutter. I seriously don’t have the time or patience to figure out what they say is important, especially when they communicate that everything is important.”
Deciphering what is important when everything seems important is a skill I really don’t excel at. Fortunately, in the past few years, I have noticed a dramatic improvement in our girls’ school and their use of paper. The one hundred pieces of paper per week has been whittled down to two or three pieces of important information.
Mrs. Becraft, principal of Horizon Elementary, shared with me a few specific examples of how the school’s administration is trying to turn the school in a different direction. She stated, “We have made many changes in the past couple of years in the support of being good stewards of our resources.”
A few of the changes Horizon has made include the following:
Parent newsletters sent via email (a minimum savings of about 2,200 piece of paper per month).
Teacher communication with families is done primarily through email/websites/blogs
Close monitoring of the heating/cooling system
Teachers are encouraged to close window blinds as well as make sure that all computers are turned off each evening.
All staff helps to make sure that lights are turned off in areas that are not being used by students.
These changes may seem small when written on paper, but the difference in our home has been astounding. Instead of getting two copies of an eight page double sided newsletter every month, I can click a link from my email inbox, read what I need to and then delete.
Horizon has also set up a Facebook page where parents can stay up-to-date on evening activities, PTO meetings and volunteer opportunities. If a parent does not have access to a computer or the internet, paper copies are made readily available to them.
From a box stashed in a kitchen corner under a chair filled with hundreds of papers slowly taking over my kitchen and my whole house, to a few papers trickling in over the course of a week, it feels like a conservationist’s dream come true. Horizon school has restored some of my sanity with these changes, and this overwhelmed mommy is grateful.
