What is Changing?
We will no longer use the term “SOS Hours”. We will no longer bill families for unserved hours. We will continue to ask parents to serve the same number of hours. We will increase visibility to serving opportunities and make it easier for parents to serve.
Serving Expectation:
We ask each RCS parent to serve 15 hours per year. Because we encourage and invite a high level of parent involvement, many parents serve far past those hours.
Past Context:
In past years, we used a term called “SOS Hours” that stood for “Serving Our School.” We tracked SOS Hours and billed families $25 per hour for unserved hours. As we grew, a few things put pressure on this system, 1) some parents began serving simply to avoid the penalty versus serving to intentionally invest in our school, 2) the increasing staffing hours required to track, manage, and bill served/unserved hours exceeded any proceeds received from unserved hours, 3) coming out of the COVID era, we had limited serving opportunities while at the same time the number of parents increased creating undue anxiety for many families to “get their hours in.” We want a culture where involved parents serve because they want to help accomplish the mission of our school not haphazardly serving to avoid a penalty.
Serving Penalty:
Some schools bill parents for unserved hours. At Renton Christian, we believe and have experienced that parents are naturally highly vested in the success of their students and want to be involved. Instead of tracking hours and assessing a penalty for unserved hours, we intentionally invest our resources into making serving opportunities clear and accessible. By removing barriers to serving and simplifying the serving process, we believe we will have a higher level of involvement than under a penalty-based system.
Thank you for partnering with Renton Christian. The RCS community is stronger when our parents, students, and staff partner together to accomplish the mission of Renton Christian. As the Body of Christ, each of us are called to serve a different function in the development of our students. The strength of our school is directly tied to the involvement of our parents. We need you!