I admire people who volunteer. The last time I did, I agreed to help out with my son’s T-ball team. That was 16 years ago. Not proud it’s been so long.
The thing is, we never have enough free time. At least that is what we tell ourselves.
Come with me.
Rhonda Haniford is giddy as a kid on Christmas morning when she opens a file on her office computer to show me the list of people who have agreed to come in during the week to help.
She is principal at Centaurus High School in Lafayette. The $260 million reduction in state K-12 education funding forced her to eliminate seven full-time-equivalent positions, which at Centaurus is a deep, deep staffing wound, well past bone.
She had an idea: Stick a volunteer signup sheet in each student’s registration packet, detailing jobs that need to get done and the times available. Maybe a parent or two would bite, she figured.
By Thursday, the fourth day of the school year, 151 parents had signed up to volunteer.
They would fill in for the secretary in the counseling office whose hours were cut in half, staff the checkout desk at the library, answer phones, tutor, write grants, run the photocopying machine on the second floor.
The list goes on.
Haniford squirms in her chair when I ask the question. “Yes” she finally says, “that was quite a bit more volunteers than I expected.”
Lafayette is a mostly working- class town, and nearly everyone on the list, the principal said, will juggle duties at the school around their work.
The lone exception might be Mabel Gong, 49. She was photocopying nearly 700 pages of tests, worksheets and study guides.
Her 16-year-old son, Trevor Parent, is a junior at the school. A former computer programmer, she years ago agreed with her civil engineer husband, Bobby, to stay home with the kids.
Today, she volunteers at least six hours a week over three days at Centaurus, plus another four hours two days a week at Louisville Middle School, where her daughter, Emma, is an eighth- grader.
She had been doing volunteer work at school since Trevor was in kindergarten. The school budget crunch and the principal’s request allowed her to make a difference in her community during tough times, she said.
“No, I can’t just sit and watch Oprah. I just can’t,” she said. “I need to do something that is fulfilling.”
What Haniford discovered is many of the parents, like Mabel Gong, had volunteered when their children were in elementary and middle school grades.
When children enter high school, she said, the last thing they want is to find their parents walking the hallways or sitting behind the library desk. Many parents stayed at home. Budget cuts, she said, rallied them.
“My son told me I could do this as long as I never go into his classroom,” Gong said, feeding yet more documents into the copy machine.
“He’s a teenager. I understand it. He is trying to find himself apart from his parents.”
It is nearly 2 p.m., and the school switchboard in the main office sits deserted. No one has signed up for this shift. Calls are being routed to various school secretaries.
Gong is nearly finished with the copying upstairs.
“I think I can fill in down there until 3,” she said.
Bill Johnson writes Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Reach him at 303-954-2763 or wjohnson@denverpost.com.
