Reply #25: More like financial survival [View All]

Do me a favor, please: About three weeks from now the school year will be in full swing everywhere. Get in your car on Saturday morning and drive around town looking for places where schoolkids are holding car washes.

Then look at what the car wash is for.

In days of old, the cheerleaders would wash cars to raise money for...something the team needed. Many cheerleading squads require the cheerleaders to supply their own uniforms and shoes; all of them require the cheerleaders provide their own stockings and pay for the ton of makeup all cheerleaders wear when they cheer. And because the cheerleading team isn't the football team, the cheerleaders are invariably on the short end of the stick when it comes to doling out activity funds...even though, quite often, the cheerleaders are the only thing at the game that's worth watching. A few weeks before the end of school here, I stopped by a cheerleader car wash and was informed that they were buying library books with their proceeds. "Well, then, wash it twice."

Got news for ya: thanks to Mr. Bush and his No Child Left Untested initiative, schools have to pay more money than ever before to meet government expectations. Fuckin' Republicans say they hate unfunded mandates but NCLB was a big one. If the schools want to do anything but pay for testing, testing, testing...they need to scrape up cash any way they possibly can.

Hence, coke machines.