Parent activists come together
Cupertino parents’ success in raising $2.5 million in eight weeks to save 100 teachers’ jobs and small classes is providing a model for parents in other communities distraught over budget cuts threatening their schools.
The huge, time-consuming effort also taught a lesson to Cupertino parents, which they are happy to share: Once is plenty; don’t count on doing this every year to bail out your budgets.
The outgrowth of the Cupertino experience is a new, as yet unnamed Silicon Valley organization of parents with a two-prong goal: grass-roots organizing to save local schools and regional and state activism to reform education funding.
“Ours was a band-aid solution so the next logical step is long-term solutions,” said Hoi-Yung Poon, one of the parent organizers in Cupertino. “We need to look at the larger revenue and funding structure.”
Last month, a forum to discuss Cupertino’s fund-raising tactics drew 50 parent leaders from the Bay Area. Since then, parent leaders from 10 districts have met to lay out steps to create their organization over the summer. They have created a Yahoo group, parentsforaction, and plan to hold candidates’ forums on education and on Proposition 13 in the fall. Some of the organizers are interested in Close the Loophole, a campaign organized by San Francisco assessor Phil Ting to fix tax loopholes benefiting owners of commercial real estates.
The statewide PTA does advocacy and has joined the state school boards and administrators associations in Robles-Wong v. California, challenging the state’s level of school funding. But on a local level, most PTAs are focused on raising money for individual schools.
The Cupertino parents’ The Future Is Now campaign was districtwide, and it took fundraising to new heights, with its organization and intensity. It had sophisticated marketing plans and adopted traditional community organizing tactics. About half of 10,000 families and 100 businesses ended up making donations.
Cupertino is the home of Apple Computing, but it has one of the lowest state aid per student in Santa Clara County. The lowest, at $5,425 per student, is Evergreen Elementary District in San Jose and is following the Cupertino model. Parent leader Steffanee Taylor says that parents is creating two separate organizations, the Evergreen Elementary Education Foundation, with a goal of raising $1 million by December to stave off cuts next year, and Evergreen Elementary Community in Action, for lobbying for legislative changes and working with other and regional school groups on funding issues.
Parents have been the missing link in advocacy, she said. Without more parental action, there will be no change.
For more information about the regional effort, write parentsforaction@gmail.com
The City of Davis has successfully raised funds to meet budget gaps for its schools for the past several years, including $1.4 million this past year. The model is called “Dollar a Day.” The Davis Schools Foundation is a critical part of this effort: https://davisschoolsfoundation.org/. Davis also has created a web site to describe educations funding problems, called Davis Dollars.
Are there no legal issues with paying teachers’ salaries with donations?
It’s fairly common for schools and district foundations that have the wherewithal (that is, the parent wealth) to pay teacher salaries with donations. The California state PTA offers guidelines and framework and such resources. … I applaud the Cupertino parents for their dedication and support, and I’ve been part of a similar parent movement here in San Francisco (led by younger parents than myself, the new wave of parent leaders!). I do want to make a couple of points. There already IS an organization engaging in “grass-roots organizing to save local schools and regional and state activism to reform education funding” — and it’s one whose structure and strength could never, ever be replicated if it were started today. That’s the PTA, of course, which was founded in 1897 (correct, eighteen-ninety-seven) and is the nation’s oldest, largest and highest-profile volunteer-run organization advocating on behalf of children, schools and families. Trying to replicate it with a new parallel organization is far more work than getting involved in the existing PTA and making it more effective in today’s world. All you have to do is join, run for office, go at meetings, get involved! http://www.capta.org … And also, for long-term solutions it is necessary to change the culture so that “low taxes, less government” is no longer viewed as mainstream thought. Move the Overton Window!(Google and you’ll see what I mean.) (Thanks to my SFUSD-educated son, a poli-sci wonk, for introducing me to the Overton Window, a right-wing concept that we public school advocates need to embrace.)
John, I think what you mean to say is that the Cupertino’s parents’ success is providing a model for parents in other communities where 65% of the adults have a bachelor’s degree or higher, only 3.6% of the families live in poverty, 71% of the houses have a value of at least $500,000, the median household income is $118,635, and per capita income is $44,749. The Cupertino “model” is of little value in communities where parents lack the same level of personal financial wealth, social capital, and technological sophistication. That describes most communities in California. In California’s $1.8 trillion economy, there’s enough money to provide a publicly-supported, quality education for all kids. What we lack is the political will to make it happen.
The success of ballot measures supporting schools all around the bay may demonstrate that that political will is building, though! And Gloria Romero’s defeat may also be a nice big red flag to others that attacking public schools, boosting privatization and bashing teachers are political suicide, even if it pleases the billionaires. YESSSSS!
I was pleased to see the reference to Overton, since that has been the intellectual tipping point that all lobbyists pursue. To save some time, this is the gist: At any given moment the “window” includes a range of policies considered to be politically acceptable in the current climate of public opinion, with “acceptable” defined as something a politician can recommend without being considered too “extreme” or outside the mainstream to gain or keep public office. Overton arranged the spectrum on a vertical axis with policies defined as “more free” at the top and “less free” at the bottom, where “free” is defined as less subject to government intervention. When the window moves or expands, it means that ideas previously not considered politically acceptable have become so, and possibly that ideas previously considered acceptable are no longer.”" I encourage all parties to embrace the lobbyist cure for your perceived injustice, and pay us.
I’m a little confused by the conflicting messages of the first two paragraphs. Cupertino is providing a model by raising $2.5 million in 8 weeks. But their take home lesson is that it’s not sustainable. So where’s the model? If it’s district wide fundraising and advocacy, that’s what the hundreds of local education foundations around the state have been doing for years. This would be a great time for the statewide ed foundation consortium to play a larger role in political advocacy.
The big-picture definition of the Overton Window (as conceived by the late Joseph Overton of the right-wing Mackinac Center) applies to any policy or idea, not just a concept on a “free” vs. “not free” spectrum. From Mackinac’s website: “Imagine, if you will, a yardstick standing on end. On either end are the extreme policy actions for any political issue. Between the ends lie all gradations of policy from one extreme to the other. … The essence of the Overton window is that only a portion of this policy spectrum is within the realm of the politically possible at any time. … Actions outside of this window, while theoretically possible, and maybe more optimal in terms of sound policy, are politically unsuccessful. … So, if a think tank’s research and the principles of sound policy suggest a particular idea that lies outside the Overton window, what is to be done? Shift the window.” Mackinac does give “school choice” (the charter/voucher/privatization push) as an example. I would use attacking and blaming teachers as another — this would have been viewed as bizarre at one time, but is now routine behavior for mainstream editorial writers etc. We public-education advocates need to shift the window. The Gloria Romero smackdown indicates that we could be having an effect.
Riddle me this: If we’re talking honestly about what happens in public schools, to what extent is that about collective bargaining? As for the PTA, haven’t they studiously avoided any such discussion? So… where’s the political will to demand compliance with the Educational Employment Relations Act in California (and where’s the effort to build the capacity to have these conversations in our school communities)? It isn’t there – and our system like it that way.
I’ll paraphrase ex-LAUSD school board member, David Tokofsky – The District treats us like mushrooms: feeds us horse manure and keeps us in the dark.