CPS Obsessed

One of the strangest things I’ve run across in my school involvement is related to the Box Tops for Education program.  I run the program with minimal effort at our Neighborhood School.  There is a whole web site devoted to this program where coordinators can share their ideas to increase participation.  Some schools go hogwild, offering contests and prizes for the class or kid who bring in the most box tops.

I haven’t made this level of effort, although I did spring some cash to buy a giant collection box for the school office and some Box Top brand Ziploc bags for the kids to collect in.  There are many lower-income families at the school who probably are not buying many name brand items and I don’t want to make any kid feel like they can’t have a fair shot at a contest.  Actually, even I am buying fewer name brands these days now that I think about it.

I recently found out that people across the country are SELLING box tops that they save on ebay!  They collect them and cut them neatly and sell for their face value or HIGHER!  (That is 10 cents each.)  OK, I guess I can see why people would sell them to get money, despite it being verboten by the Box Tops company.  But why on earth would people BUY them?!?

According to the Box Tops message boards, people go on ebay to buy gobs of them to submit for these school contests so their kid can win the prize.  Or so their kid isn’t the only loser in the class not submitting Box Tops.  This is just too weird to comprehend.  I don’t know whether I think its worse that the school puts enough pressure on parents to buy contraband Box Tops or that parents want to get an easy win for their kids.

Clearly I will never make it into the Box Top Coordinators hall of fame.