Shame on you for working to improve your local school!

Parent Cafe
1

The Atlantic has an article bemoaning the fact that parents who volunteer and raise money for their local schools increase inequality. Well of course the do! Anyone who helps their children or their community’s children in going to make these children less equal to society at large. If children could not benefit from parental efforts, no parent would ever make a sacrifice. If all the money from a school fund-raiser is to be snatched up and given to another school district, nobody is going to participate.

http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2016/01/rich-parents-school-inequality/431640/

2

If PTAs/PTOs are part of this increasing inequality, then let’s just do away with them! Haha…so NOT going to happen.

I notice that the weak suggestions to lessen the inequality are things like,

“Greene believes that the best way to decrease inequality in schools is to focus on recruiting higher quality teachers to work in disadvantaged school districts, perhaps with higher salaries,” Not going to happen because of teacher unions.

and

“Rather than restricting affluent parents from contributing to their public schools or shaming them for their efforts, perhaps they could be encouraged to think about public education beyond their town boundaries—partnering with schools in less affluent areas and forging a fellowship over time.”

3

This sort of ridiculousness has always had fans … whether it’s fundraising too much or requesting additional challenges for higher-achieving kids, there is always someone who thinks it’s unfair to assist kids who already have what they need (in that person’s opinion). Let 'em whine about privilege or whatever … in the end, it won’t go anywhere. Those parents who are motivated to do so will always push for more & better for their kids.

(And believe it or not, these same parents may very well be advocating for other kids, too … it’s wrong to assume that just because they want the best for their own kids, they don’t care about other kids.)

4

People adopt highways for litter clean-up. Perhaps Adopt-a-School would be more helpful.

5

I think the problem with school inequity is better addressed by better funding formulas, period. And I agree with the idea that incentivizing employment is great – but where would that extra money come from? TFA does so well because it’s “teachers” are only passing by and are willing to take whatever innercity salary is offered precisely because they are not in teaching as a career. Funding inequity is a reflection of income inequity. How to solve it is an extremely complicated problem but I bet banning PTA’s is not going to be part of the solution.

Outside funding is always a problem. Here in PA, where charters are sucking the money from publics, it’s perfectly fine for a charter PTA to hold $500/plate dinners or take 6 figures from PACs or corporate donors to augment the per-student monies they take from publics, while public schools have a multitude of regulations about fundraising, gifts, and are increasingly struggling to stay open.

6

Of course we all understand why parents raise money for their own children’s schools, and I will admit that I’ve been lucky enough to send my daughter to public schools where a handful of wealthy parents have paid for things the school would otherwise have done without. But I do wish more of that money would end up at the schools that need it more.

7

@greenbutton, I agree with every word you wrote, in particular the “better funding formulas.”

BTW, at a fundraiser for my son’s very well-to-do public school, the auction items included a Persian rug worth thousands and a week at a luxury home in Aspen. Immediately, I thought of a school less than 2 miles away that was thrilled when someone donated a swing set…

8

Is it though? I’ll admit that I’ve been uncomfortable for years when I see all the high-end improvements in the public schools in my own very affluent area, which were paid for through parent sponsored, school specific fundraisers. It seems to me that it undercuts the entire notion of public schools when there are such gross disparities between schools in the same county. I’ve seen no evidence that the parents behind the fundraisers have given any thought at all about the under served kids at the school 3 miles away.

9

There is another perspective to consider. The wealthy public school donating parents could always take that money and go private. Complaining may drive the donated money out of public school altogether.

Fwiw, our private school (among many others) has constant outreach and service to lower income schools in the surrounding community. It’s not cash but, uniforms, coats, school supplies, food pantry, tutoring, scholarships etc.

10

I remember reading about this issue in NYC. There were parents who thought nothing of dropping $100,000 to pay for teacher’s aids when the school did away with them. Meanwhile in other schools they were lucky to get a couple of thousand from selling wrapping paper. It really isn’t fair. And my recollection is after the outcry NYC said PTA money couldn’t go to pay for staff anymore.

11

I am glad the Atlantic raised this issue. In our town, and state, schools get much of their funding from property tax, which is limited to a 2 1/2% increase by “Proposition 2 1/2.” If the schools need more money for to fund their proposed budget, an “override” is needed, which is voted on first at town meeting, and then at the polls by the entire town.

I ran three successful override campaigns for a total of about $5 million, raised through an increase in taxes on all property- owners. We have a lot of elderly in our town on fixed incomes, and so these campaigns tried hard to keep the amount down, and tried hard to work with seniors on getting tax rebates if needed.

In any case, this was an example of changing the funding formula at the local level. There is even more to be done at the state and federal level, especially with unfunded mandates. Or sometimes the state or feds will fund a pilot program then withdraw. Special education is the hardest most unpredictable factor in the budget.

Now, we have an Education Foundation, but our foundation does not raise big bucks. More than the PTO with its bake sales, but not a lot.

When I served on the foundation, I often questioned the mission. The reason is, that when private education foundations fund, say, a tablet for every student, or a new greenhouse for the elementary school or a trip to colleges or French in first grade, whatever, it lets the town, state and feds off the hook. Public schools are supposed to be publicly funded, not privately funded. If private donors make certain things possible in the schools, then the town is even less likely to support the expenditure in their town budget: these essentials are called “frills” by the town finance committee and the ed foundation then has to fund it.

I sat on the board of the ed foundation and it seemed that I constantly said, “NO, we should not fund this, it is the responsibility of the town.”

When wealthy ed foundations and parents start funding things that either would not happen otherwise, or should be funded by the state, it creates two problems. If the program would not happen otherwise, then some other less affluent town isn’t getting the same program, through public funding, or through foundation funding. So this is unequal.

And with the second part, if ed foundations, parents and donors fund certain programs, why would the town or state put them in their budget if the programs are taken care of privately? This becomes habitual, and eventually there is no expectation of public funding. We saw this with sports in our town. This is kind of like feeding the ducks: keep feeding them and they forget how to get food for themselves.

Just to say it again: public schools are supposed to be publicly funded.

Much better to address funding inadequacies at the political level than through private funds. The higher the political level, the more people benefit, but the local level can help too. Though then the inequities lie in…differences in property taxes!!!

12

This issue to a large extent is unique to the US as we’re one of the few countries in the world to base school funding mainly on local/regional tax bases.

In many other nations, public funding is centralized at the national level so there’s much less substantiative differences between the quality of public schools in one area versus another.

As a doctor Central Eastern Europe I had briefly in middle school once noted, unlike here in the US where the academic quality/funding of public schools can vary greatly by region or even neighborhood, there is no such wide variation in his home country.

Public schools in his home country receive around the same levels of funding unless there’s substantiated need for MORE as determined by national educational officials and it’s unheard of to run bake sales or fund raisers to provide for basics such as lab equipment or textbooks. Several relatives and HS classmates who spent several years in public schools in Taiwan or other East Asian countries made similar observations.

13

Funding alone is not the answer. A radical federal judge ordered Missouri to spend $2 billion on the Kansas City schools over 12 years. They were just about the most lavishly funding in the nation, and given the cost of living of that area, certainly the most lavishly funded. Test scores went down and dropout rates went up.

In 2010, Mark Zuckerburg gave the Newark, NJ schools $100 million in an effort to turn them around. The money was just thrown away on raises for incompetent teachers, with absolutely nothing to show for it. In fact, the district is in worse shape today, because these incompetents are now entitled to continue receiving their inflated salaries.

@compmom I think private donors and fundraisers are willing to try to do things for students that should not be funded by taxpayers,. It might very well be that some members of a community will join together to subsidize a trip to Paris, or Washington, or whatever, but this is not an expense that should be laid upon the taxpayers. It’s a luxury. The alternative is that parents would join together to do these things outside of school, in all likelihood leaving the less affluent classmates out of the mix. Is this what we want?

14

Earlvandorn, we agree. Private fundraising can make things possible, like trips abroad, that would not be funded otherwise. That was exactly the point, that some communities can do this and others can’t.

And the article was specifically about private funding efforts. Of course funding doesn’t solve everything in chronically low income areas. I don’t think the article covered this issue, which is separate from the topic at hand, inequities in private funding and the effects of that.

Cobrat that is an interesting post. I believe that the biggest problem, as you said, is the reliance on local taxes. And that the higher up (fed not state not local) you go on governmental level, the more inequities can be addressed. But then again, I am a fan of local control of the schools!!!

15

We have a fairly wealthy district here, but even in that district there are huge discrepancies between schools. Every student in the district has what he needs - teachers, aids, sports, nice playgrounds, field trips, lunches. One grade school in particular is full of pretty wealthy kids. Their parents are the lawyers, doctors, sports stars. Their little fundraisers and auctions bring in $200k without trying., but if they need anything they just ask a parent and the money appears. If these students didn’t go to this school that has way more than it needs, they’d just go to private schools as many of their neighbors do.

How is it hurting anyone for them to have more than they need? Everyone else in the district has plenty., this school just has much more.

Now if you look at the city school district, it is very uneven. The charter and magnet schools have sucked all the good students, and the involved parents, out of the neighborhood schools. Again, if they didn’t go to magnets and charters, they’d most likely go to a private school so ‘spreading the wealth’ is not going to work. There is a lottery to get into some of the schools, and if a student doesn’t get into the ‘good’ school, the parents often send them to a catholic school in the city or a private school out of the city. There is a lot of cheating using grandparent’s address or renting a cheap apartment (when there were cheap apartments to be had) to get into these schools, but if they don’t, it is not that expensive to go to a catholic school - where there will be fundraisers to support that school.

My sister works in a school that was a Title1 school, but the neighborhood is changing and soon the school will be for the wealthy only. It’s good that the young parents have auctions and fundraisers, but the more they make, the more popular the school becomes, the more likely that the poor students will be shut out of the neighborhood and thus out of the school. Currently, my sister posts ‘fundraisers’ online, and her wealthy friends from her prior life in the corporate world give money. Other teachers don’t have wealthy friends so even that is rather unfair.

16

It’s not that hard to understand. Public schools should be publicly funded, that is, by local, state and federal governments. When parents and other donors raise funds privately, it takes pressure off the funding from government funding, and ultimately reduces it.

And, clearly, it increases inequities. Our ed foundation was lucky to raise $15k in a year. Even then, as a person on the board of the foundation, I opposed a lot of the projects. If the foundation funded it, it would remain privately funded and the public funding would never come through.

Example would be smart boards. The ed foundation was asked to pay for smartboards for all classrooms. This was absurd. (And smartboards become obsolete quickly- that’s a lot of golf tournaments in our town, which raise about $5K each). After discussion, we agreed to fund two smartboards to demonstrate any improvements possible with the new technology. (This also became an issue because in a lower income district like ours, the school could not assume all kids had devices and had to fund those too). The next year, because the foundation had refused to fund more, the town government merged school and town technology departments and paid for what was needed.

Schools can chase grants, elsewhere than parents and foundations. Our school just got a grant for a greenhouse. We do not have a grantwriting staff. Some schools do, and that also might create inequities.

I actually left the ed foundation. I don’t think that much should be done privately at all. It is like giving the schools fish when the schools need to learn to fish.

Now, political action, overrides, that kind of thing, are open to any community, but even then, if most parents are working at more than one low paying job, they aren’t exactly available to advocate or run campaigns.

Editing to add that our area also has school choice, meaning, students can go to other towns’ schools if there is room. The towns with more private funding draw more students from other towns. Money is taken from the sending town to the receiving town. Therefore, privately funded programs and enhancements at the more affluent receiving town end up costing a lot of money for the sending town. The sending town schools lose the best students and quality worsens, more leave for the receiving town, and so on.

17

So, should parents stop volunteering to help in their kids’ classrooms, too? My kids’ school had a number of parents who were either stay-at-home or worked part-time, and there were always lots of parents in the classrooms, helping teachers. Other schools in the district had parents were not in the classroom for whatever reason. Was it unfair that my kids’ teachers had more help?

And, yes, it IS wrong to assume that just because parents want the best for their own kids, they don’t care about other kids. After I moved my kids to private schools because my D’s middle school did not offer what I considered an adequate education, I continued to work to raise the standards in the public schools … for all the kids who were still in those schools. I am not the only person like me. Lots of people work to better the lives of kids who aren’t their own … even as they work to better their own kids’ lives.

Of course, I’m not rich. Maybe if I was rich, I wouldn’t care (yes, that is sarcastic).

18

It’s not fair that some parents read to their young children and others don’t. The government should remove the books from those cheating parents’ homes.

19

I am all for efforts to improve education for lower income students, but any approach that tries to increase equality by dumbing down the best performing students is a mistake.

Plus, I am not sure how much of an advantage extra money provides. Being an education-focused family does not need to be expensive. Reading books and doing your math homework does not cost very much money.

20

I have a friend in a city where this has been an issue. The more affluent parents at an elementary paying for the library teacher that other elementary schools in the district have had to cut from the budget. My understanding is that one problem is that the people with the most power for change are the ones just paying for whatever their particular child’s school needs rather than being a force for change to make sure all kids have a good public education.
There are schools with no librarian, no school nurses, kindergarten (and older) classrooms with over the limit in number kids which the rules but the teachers get a bonus for having extra kids over the limit so they aren’t fighting it even though it’s not good for the kids.
Children of affluent parents are always going to have more options and more opportunities but when they are paying for necessities because it’s not being covered by public education, that means kids in less affluent schools are likely getting a sub par education and no one is trying to change it.