Sigh. High school... seems like ages ago! I can't believe ten years have passed. Lucky for me -- or not -- people have been hounding me about our ten year reunion. I guess that came with the territory of being the Class President. (No geek jokes, please.)

I had everything figured out ten years ago. We hired a company called Keep In Touch Network (KIT) to plan our reunion(s), to manage all our communications, and to send occasional classmate updates to everyone in our class. At the time, they were the only ones really doing what they did, but a few years later, in come heavyweight sites like Classmates.com and Reunion.com... and KIT went out of business along with our money as far as we know.

Great.

So thanks to MySpace and Facebook, I've got messages and comments galore about our ten year reunion. (I swore I was only serving a 4-year term!!) Out of the kindness on my heart -- yes, there is some waaaaaaay deep down in there -- I've decided to try and pull off something worth remembering. Rest assured, the journey will be recorded via this blog. It should be exciting. In fact, the person who some would consider my "arch nemesis" in high school sent me a message on MySpace today offering to help. It is truly a relief, but I have to admit that there's a small part of me wondering if this is some evil plot to let karma have its way with me. It's been ten years though, right? Please tell me I have nothing to worry about.

I've started to talk to other people about their high school reunion experiences and I have to say, private school kids had it pretty good. See, in public schools, we had to fundraise for EVERYTHING. From selling candy, to bake sales, to expensive prom tickets, the things we did as a class could only be as fun as the money we'd earned would allow. I mean, the difference from having Senior Grad Night at Disneyland versus Great America could be washing 100 cars at our sponsored car wash. It was hard work! On top of that, not everyone participated, but everyone was affected.

Private schools, at least as far as I've heard in the last few weeks, would actually designate funds from the tuition money they received. One of my friends said that the school hosted a $30,000 ten year reunion for them simply from the class funds the school had collected during the time they were in school. WOW. Must be nice. My class is currently debating having our reunion at a night club because no one wants to pay a cover charge... (rolls eyes).

Looking back, I really don't think I would have done anything differently. It's not like I knew that KIT network was going to go out of business. If we'd had a really successful way to manage or raise funds simply for our reunion, perhaps things wouldn't be this way.

Four of my nine nieces and nephews will be in high school as of September (oy!). Not to mention, they're all in public school. Schoolpop.com (site) is a site that offers a handful of unique programs for high schools to raise money. What really caught my eye was that schools can earn money simply because YOU shop online! Crazy, no? I haven't navigated through the entire site yet, but I did search for my high school and they're registered with the site! Now, I'm searching all the schools in my area. Ha! Visit their site to contribute to school fundraising programs for your alumni or for your child(ren)'s school. Make sure your kids get the ten year reunion they deserve and, well... I must say it... give the Class President a break!