No, I haven't done this personally (although we had them even at my elementary school in the 1980s! I believe we were ahead of the curve. ;-) It was during the first major wave of interest in recycling, which seemed to die down later on but has revived with the new "green" movement.) We composted much of the cafeteria waste - students were encouraged to scrape vegetables into one bin, and everything else into another, and then the vegetable bin was emptied into the compost bin outside, and yard waste was also added. (Yes, not a perfect system when relying on children, but it worked decently.) My thinking is that most schools already have dumpsters, which tend to have a wide array of things added to them. The trash smells from these dumpters are almost invariably worse than any smell from a compost pile which does not have meat products added. If this is the case at your school, that's already one point you can make. Until recently, I worked at a private boarding school. I am aware that the "green movement" and "sustainability" is a huge thing in education - followed with almost religious fervor at many places, even without doing adequate research to support the enthusiasm. So, I actually do not expect that you will have many problems, unless your school system is very behind the times.

I work in the office at a school with small children. We have no school nurse. I agree your grandson should not have been standing in the hallway in that condition. I also agree that 45 minutes is much too long to wait. However, I know that when we have a child in soiled clothing, we always call the parent to give the parent the option of bringing their child clothing. If they can't, we then help the child clean up and change into some of our donated clothes. Sometimes a parent will respond with, "yes, I'll be right there" and no one will come for 45 minutes. If we'd known they would take that long, we'd have changed the child ourselves. By giving the parents the opportunity to come, we feel obligated to wait for them. Most parents would be unhappy if they told us they were coming and then we cleaned and changed their child. I'm not saying what happened to your grandson was good, but I am saying there could be alternate reasons why the circumstances played out the way they did. Most of the people working with small children really care and don't want to humiliate or hurt them. Truly, I'm sorry this happened to your grandson. This post was edited by sarahmakes6 on Sat, Sep 6, 14 at 20:03

Oh and the yellow-belly superintendent who hid from us during the above post of mine is now one of our State Senators. So now we have a lying self-serving representative who used "for the children" (NOT) as a political springboard. Lying scum. We need to get politics out of our schools. Teachers and parents used to do a great job in the past (pre 60's) without a dozen school administrators breathing down their necks. One principal per school and several students counselors were the norm. Now it's more like 5 or 6 principals, vice principals and associates, several assistants and one student counselor per hundreds of students, many who never even get to see their counselor in 4 years of high school. We need to get rid of the NEA, and get government out of education and make teaching an honored profession again with parental oversite. Involved parents know who the good teachers are. Politics allows the bad apples to stay. From bad teacher to bad administrator.

Hey everyone, I figured I would give an update to this post since it’s been almost a year since we purchased our sofa. We got the Big Sur sectional from PB, and it’s roughly one square acre in size, give or take. From a design standpoint, I wasn’t on board with a huge sectional, but compromising with design style and my wife’s desire for our kids to all all lay on it comfortably, we went with this option. Also, disclaimer, I went with this option because of price. I was not able to/willing to pay more than $5000 for a sofa because that’s what worked for our budget. That restraint plus the size space we wanted to have led to me being comfortable with this choice. Also, everyone’s at a different comfort level with longevity and replacement, and I’m fine having this so far for the price for the next 5 to 7 years, and then replacing it with something high end when we can afford it. What I didn’t want to do is stretch our budget and get something long-term when I anticipate the years of use will be down the structure and fabric no matter what. It’s only been a year, but being in quarantine at home all the time, and my children’s insistence on disobeying “don’t eat this in the living room“ rules, I would say I am very happy. As I mentioned in a previous comment, the Everydaylinen (Oatmeal) is not an especially comfortable fabric, and that continues to be true, but it is not offputting. It’s just not the softest material, though I would say it’s very durable. We use our sofa multiple times a day, my dog insists on sitting on it, and I’ve spilled multiple things on it (red wine twice no judgment, three nose bleeds), and it still looks new. The slipcovers don’t shift much and I’ve only steam pressed it twice. My only complaint is not structural, it’s just a little bit bland. I think that has to do with how large the sofa is, and that I went with an almost white color. Thankfully, I painted the living room white also (Aesthetic White SW 7035), so it feels like an intentional mono-chronicity (I’m making up words now). In short, I don’t regret my decision, and unless I had another two or $3000 to spend on a sofa, I would do it again.