Vidalia &8212; If Phyllis White were a bird or a frog she might be placed on the endangered species list at Vidalia Lower Elementary.

To the many of the teachers at the school, White is one of a rare breed.

She greets students each morning at 7:30 and waves each one goodbye at 3:15 every school afternoon.

Yet, she is not a teacher. In fact, she is not on the Concordia Parish School District&8217;s payroll.

She works for free. She is a parent volunteer.

And parent volunteers are hard to come by in the school of more than 500 students.

Throughout the year the number of parent volunteers at Vidalia Lower varies from 10 to 15 parents.

&8220;A parent needs to be involved in their child&8217;s education,&8221; White said Monday afternoon in the school cafeteria.

Unlike many parents who work full time, White had the time and the desire to help make Vidalia Lower a better school.

Volunteers help teachers with many of the everyday non-academic tasks. These might include sorting papers and monitoring student activities.

Monday White was helping sort more than 3,000 workbooks that will be handed out to each student. Workbooks had to be sorted in piles according to grade and teacher. It was a task White, a teacher and another volunteer spent all day Monday to do.

After Hurricane Katrina, White saw a school that was bursting at the seams. She also saw that many teachers had no teaching assistants to help.

It was hard for teachers to take bathroom breaks without leaving students unattended, White said.

So White decided to help by giving teachers more time for teaching by doing some of the ordinary classroom tasks.

But if you asked White whether she wanted to be paid for all that she does at the school, she would quickly respond with an emphatic &8220;no.&8221;

But White said she is not at the school

for the money.

&8220;I am here for the kids,&8221; she said. &8220;I am here for the teachers.&8221;