Separate and Unequal: Fund-raisers give schools an edge

[Peter Farruggio <pfarr@uclink4.berkeley.edu>]

Part three of the series on "Savage Inequalities" running in the Oakland 
Tribune...


http://www.oaklandtribune.com/Stories/0,1413,82%257E1865%257E1462430,00.html

Article Last Updated: Wednesday, June 18, 2003 - 6:11:15 AM PST


Separate and Unequal: Fund-raisers give schools an edge
Fund-raisers pay for things poorer facilities have to cut
By Jill Tucker and Robert Gammon, STAFF WRITERS

FORGET bake sales.
Menlo Park Elementary School parents have raised more than $900,000 for the 
district's four schools this year mostly from their annual auction -- the 
equivalent of about $450 per student.

In Piedmont, several fund-raisers bring in about $1.3 million each year, or 
about $500 per student.

Woodside parents also raise about $1.3 million, a whopping $3,000 for each 
child -- through donation request letters and phone calls as well as an 
auction.

Gone are the days when parents baked a batch of cookies for new band 
uniforms or extra books for the library.

These days, a variety of fund-raisers, including glitzy auctions, charity 
running races, local cable telethons, dinners, raffles and outright 
requests for cash mean big bucks for some schools districts -- money that 
not only pays for library books, but the librarians, too.

That discretionary money has meant the difference between keeping or 
cutting art, music, textbooks or even teachers in those districts, 
especially when the economy calls for cutbacks, as is currently the case.

But not all parents can pump millions into their local public schools.

The disparity in donations has resulted in students from higher-income 
areas receiving a public education often worth hundreds or thousands of 
dollars more than their low-income counterparts.

It also means that the real condition of public education is being masked 
in middle- and upper-class communities -- with parents and private money 
literally filling in the holes left by budget cuts and below-average state 
spending on schools.

"We're paying for math textbooks; we're paying for a science teacher; we're 
paying for the librarians," said Lynne Young, president of the non-profit 
Menlo Park-Atherton Education Foundation, which has raised more than $20 
million since 1982. "We've really worked hard at letting our parent 
population know that a good public school is not free."

It's a situation that has the state's teachers union brass posing the 
impossible: Prevent parents from contributing to their schools so the real 
condition of public education is exposed, thereby forcing the middle class 
to direct its political pull at more public resources for everyone.

"It sounds almost un-American," said Wayne Johnson, outgoing president of 
the California Teachers Association. "But when you allow communities to 
subsidize a particular school ... it creates even larger inequities. You 
shouldn't be allowed to do that."

Luxury for some

In the Oakland hills, at Redwood Heights Elementary School -- where just 8 
percent of students are considered low-income -- the PTA raised $106,000 
this year.

Equal to $380 per student, the money pays for a librarian, field trips, 
office equipment, a lunch supervisor and classroom grants for teachers.

"We've had the luxury of being very flush with money," said Redwood Heights 
PTA President Anna Brekke-Yungert. "It's also totally luxury to have 
parents who have the time to volunteer. Unfortunately, other schools don't 
have that luxury."

Down in the flatlands, at Horace Mann Elementary School in East Oakland -- 
where 63 percent of students are poor -- there is no PTA.

A school fund-raiser last fall brought in $900, or the equivalent of $1.77 
per student.

"If you live up in the hills, let's face it, a lot of mothers aren't 
working so they have time," said Horace Mann's principal, Nancy Morganti. 
"But we live in a socio-economic area where some parents may work a swing 
shift or at a time where they can't come to a PTA meeting."

And they don't necessarily have the ability to write a check to help cover 
school costs that state money can't.

Granted, schools with a large number of low-income students are eligible 
for significant public and private resources not available to higher-income 
schools, including technology grants, federal Title I money and 
taxpayer-funded teacher training.

But that money often comes with strings attached, leaving individual 
schools often unable to address the specific needs of students.

This so-called categorical funding might provide computers for every 
classroom, for example, to a school that lacks updated wiring. Or it might 
provide money to buy library books when there aren't enough textbooks to go 
around.

Yet in higher income areas, parent or community donations can mean 
computers, teacher salaries, building renovations, textbooks or even tubas, 
if desired, freeing up public money that would have otherwise been spent on 
those items.

Many of those schools end up looking like private schools with a public 
name. And the parents, who would otherwise be paying for private school 
anyway, get more bang for their buck by supplementing their publicly funded 
school instead.

"A lot of the families in our district could go public or private and they 
choose to go public for a lot of reasons," Young said, adding that a local 
private school in Atherton costs about $25,000 per year. "So writing a 
check for (the average donation to the non-profit foundation) is a lot less."

Feeling the pinch

After 1978's Proposition 13 shifted the financial burden of educating 
children from school districts to the state, schools started to feel the 
pinch caused by the lack of local control. They could no longer raise taxes 
to pay the bills.

So parents started to step in.

They started forming nonprofit foundations -- allowing them to essentially 
hand over cold, hard cash to the districts to buy whatever the community 
felt the schools needed.

That money was on top of the traditional PTA contributions -- which 
typically don't pay for teacher or staff salaries and are usually tangible 
gifts, like computers, books, building renovations and art supplies.

Only about a dozen foundations existed before Proposition 13; there are now 
more than 500 such groups across California that raise an estimated $30 
million each year.

"Foundations do bring in untapped resources," said Susan Sweeney, executive 
director of the California Consortium of Education Foundations. "The local 
community can decide what's really important to them."

In years past, that used to mean educational extras, maybe field trips, 
guest speakers or expensive art equipment.

But local parent groups are saying the foundations are increasingly paying 
for basics, such as librarians, facility upgrades or other teaching staff.

"Without the PTA, our kids wouldn't have access to art and music, and the 
library," said Patrice Fusillo, president of Oakland's Hillcrest Elementary 
School. "The sad reality is that as the state cuts more and more in what 
they're giving to schools, parents have no choice but to raise money if 
they want to have things."

In Menlo Park, Young said the foundation pays for librarians at each of the 
four schools, an elementary school science teacher, the middle school art 
program, math textbooks and materials, musical instruments and field trips, 
among other things.

"I think it's very unfortunate, but it's just reality that in California 
you have to contribute to your public schools," she added. "The government 
is just not giving enough funds and paying for things to give a quality 
education."

Parents make a difference

So what does that mean if parents can't pick up the slack?

Study after study shows that parent involvement at a child's school -- be 
that financial or personal time -- makes a difference in boosting student 
performance, reducing dropout rates and alleviating behavior problems.

Minority and low-income parents, as well as those with lower levels of 
education, are less likely to participate in back-to-school night, science 
fairs, parent-teacher conferences and school board meetings or to 
volunteer, according to the U.S. Department of Education.

In Berkeley, for example, parents in some neighborhoods don't understand 
how to help their schools and so they don't try, said parent Trina 
Ostrander, who is also executive director the Berkeley Public Education 
Foundation.

In wealthier neighborhoods, however, families have personal resources and 
understand how to connect them to the schools.

"They have friends who own Pixar," she said. "Parents who have 
expectations, they know where to go to get extra support."

For those schools, that parent support produces a chain reaction:

- The extra resources help create a strong educational environment.

- Teachers are drawn to schools with resources and parent support.

- Students perform well with good teachers and significant resources.

- Parents with resources are drawn to the neighborhood because the school 
is good.

And the cycle continues.

The opposite is often true for schools without such resources.

Especially in lean budget times, schools without parent resources have to 
cut programs, layoff teachers and reduce overhead.

Music, art, small classes and librarians get the ax.

While they might still have computers bought with special public funding, 
they don't have anyone to help incorporate them into the curriculum.

Students already at a socio-economic disadvantage face even greater obstacles.

Teachers don't want to teach in such a difficult environment.

And the cycle continues.

"Schools are based so much on parent participation," said Anthony Hall, 
chairman of the Parent Teacher Club at Hoover Elementary School in 
low-income West Oakland. "You really need parents to be involved with the 
kids. But our parents -- most of our parents -- are just not available. 
Their life situations are more than they can handle. I know three kids who 
have relatives who were shot to death recently."

The Hoover Parent Teacher Club raised about $1,200 this year for the 
school, where test scores rank at the bottom of the state.

Hall is the club's only member.

PTA's pairing up

In some communities across the country, including Bethesda, Md., and 
Memphis, Tenn., PTA organizations in wealthier areas are pairing up with 
those in lower socio-economic communities to sponsor fund-raisers together. 
The pairing has apparently helped schools with fewer PTA members to 
increase recruitment and share the time-consuming responsibilities of 
raising money.

Locally, in some of the larger districts, like Fremont, which has diverse 
demographics, the parent foundations are helping spread the wealth across 
all district schools, regardless of how much parents at each campus 
contribute.

"Every Fremont school has either a PTA or PTO (parent-teacher 
organization), but the amount of money they can raise and the amount of 
participation they have varies greatly," said Nina Moore, outgoing 
president of the Fremont Education Foundation and the district's school 
board president. "Our whole idea was to do something that we could do 
equitably across the district."

The foundation has raised about $80,000 each year since 2000 through a 
telethon and mailing campaign. The money buys an after-school band program 
in all 27 elementary schools.

Music in the those grades had been absent since the early '90s -- cut 
during the last serious budget crisis.

About 1,000 students now participate in the program.

Moore said she left her job as a director at Sun Microsystems to 
concentrate on her children and their education. She has thrown herself 
into the task, multitasking through fund-raisers for the foundation and 
budget cuts on the board.

She acknowledged the schools that need the most resources for their 
students are likely to get hit the hardest because there will be no one to 
help fill the gaps.

"I really think it's so important to have people fighting for all the 
schools," she said. "If you are a single parent or if you're two working 
blue-collar parents, working split shifts, that doesn't mean you don't care 
about your child's education. It means you can't be as involved."

Contact Jill Tucker at jtucker@angnewspapers.com and Robert Gammon at 
rgammon@angnewspapers.com .