Donations are salve for painful cuts
Adequate state funding is long-term answer
Every day, the budget picture seems to get worse for schools in California. In the last two years alone, schools have been cut by $17 billion, with another $2 billion in cuts proposed for 2010-11. Schools face cuts to libraries, and arts and music programs, as well as increased class sizes. Not surprisingly, some parents are fighting back by raising private funds to replace lost state funding.
Last spring, a group of parents in Cupertino Union School District raised $2 million to fund teacher salaries and keep their elementary school class sizes low. At San Francisco’s McKinley Elementary, parents are cheering after an anonymous donor wrote a check for $85,000 to save a Spanish language program at the school for this school year.
Parents contributing money to fund classroom needs isn’t new – the bake sale or car wash is a longstanding tradition in schools. But in today’s economic climate, parents are raising serious money to fund core educational programs, and this raises troubling questions about equity.
In San Francisco Unified, PTA officers estimate that parent fundraising contributes several million dollars a year to local schools, over and above the programs funded by several private foundations supporting our 55,000 students. The problem is that fundraising varies widely from school to school. A high-needs elementary school in one part of the city might raise $10,000 a year, while a similar-size school in a more affluent neighborhood might easily raise several hundred thousand dollars. The school district attempts to balance that disparity by using a weighted student formula, allowing state categorical funding to follow the highest-need students, but the unfortunate reality is that the higher-need schools feel the brunt of state budget cuts first.
This year, the inequities are particularly pronounced, because some PTAs are raising record amounts to fill the gaps at their schools. Sherman Elementary, one of the school district’s most sought-after programs, stepped up its efforts and raised $200,000 in 2009-10 – a 40 percent increase over the previous year. The extra funds will restore two teaching positions and provide a cushion for the school’s many parent-funded extras like a garden and a thriving arts program. The disparity between the programs offered at some sites and not others became so troubling to a group of parent leaders that they approached a local foundation, the San Francisco Schools Alliance, proposing a matching fund system that would ask local businesses and individuals to “match” funds raised by all the PTAs in the district, and then divide those funds equally among all the schools according to enrollment. Plans for the fund are moving ahead, but no one really knows how much more money can be raised by private donors in San Francisco.
Limitations of private funding
And there’s the rub: raising private money to offset state cuts is a great solution in the short run (at least for those communities that have adequate wealth), but is it sustainable or even desirable? Does it create equitable opportunities for all students? I would say no. A recently-filed lawsuit argues that the state’s system of funding schools is unsound, unstable, insufficient and unconstitutional, and I agree.
Returning to a system of local funding and local control is part of the solution, but as a trustee of an urban district, I remain concerned that needier students will be shortchanged if we simply localize funding without acknowledging that current funding levels are not sufficient. As a state, we need to take a hard look at what we collectively expect our schools to do, and what those expectations actually cost. New York did this, and after a successful school funding lawsuit, has added billions – yes! – to its education budget. According to Education Week, New York’s average per student expenditures are more than $5,000 higher than California’s.
If individual communities want to go over and above our common expectations, and people in those communities are willing to tax themselves to pay the premium, they should be able to do so (and without a supermajority!). But let’s at least make sure that we fund our schools at a level that meets the minimum expectations of all Californians. What’s good enough for New Yorkers should be good enough for us!
Rachel Norton has served on the San Francisco Board of Education since January 2009. Before her election to the school board, she served as San Francisco Unified School District Community Advisory Committee for Special Education, and as an active volunteer for Parents for Public Schools – San Francisco. In her professional life, she has worked as a writer and editor for Reuters Plc, The New York Times, CNet and Fora.tv.
Is there any measure other than increased funding by which one can say that the New York school funding lawsuit was successful?
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Hear, hear. Private giving to public schools is a time-honored tradition to support extracurricular activities, school dances, and field trips. But it is intolerable that parents now find it necessary to raise funds for core programs and personnel. More important (as Rachel Norton so forcefully argues), the equity implications are troubling. Not only do schools in wealthier neighborhoods raise more money through their 501(c)(3) Local Education Foundations (LEFs), the feds give donors a tax break for giving to LEFs. While it would be shortsighted to revisit the tax deductibility of giving to such charitable organizations, the state (or even local districts) could consider imposing some type of revenue-sharing scheme on LEFs as a condition on giving to local schools, e.g., for every $100 given by an LEF to a single elementary school, say $50 or so would go into a general fund for all district schools. No doubt that some donors will refuse to chip-in given the revenue-sharing scheme, but the marginal loss of overall funding would be offset by the equity gains and the real-dollar gains in less wealthy schools. It’s also worth noting that LEFs can yield considerable clout, as the LEF–not the school board or even principal–gets to decide how the dollars are spent in the schools. Granted, most LEFs work cooperatively with principals, but there is a risk that spending priorities could get distorted at the school-site or district level.
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As a parent that worked on the Cupertino (CUSD) fund raiser, we were often confronted with the question ‘What about next year’? I drew an analogy of an ER patient that also had a long term illness. The imminent layoff of over 100 teachers required an immediate fix as we knew it would be much more difficult to reinstate them once gone. We admitted that in the future other, longer term, solutions would have to be found.
One thing that made the CUSD fund raiser more difficult was the superintendent’s requirement that we raise funds across the entire district and not on an individual school basis. This was the best compromise that could be found to be equitable to all 25 schools.
But that’s not what really moved me to respond. I find CUSD something of a conundrum. It appears CUSD is one of the lowest funded districts locally. Yet, the district has a large number of schools that perform well above the norm. Clearly, funding is only part of the issue. Instead, I have to point towards heavy parental involvement making the biggest difference in school quality. It is this same parental buy-in that allowed our fund raiser to be successful. Certainly more money makes it easier to achieve good results, but it won’t convince parents of the value of an education.
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