Sharing School Fundraising Dollars
As I have previously reported, a group of Seattle schools in the SE banded together in order to fundraise together. It's long been true that there are schools throughout SPS who do not even have a PTA and so have fewer options to give students in those schools enrichment opportunities.
The name of that group is the Southeast Seattle Schools Fundraising Alliance. The group had many supporters for their last effort and one of them was Queen Anne Elementary. On June 17th it will be Southeast Seattle Schools evening at the Mariners.
From KUOW:
Half of the money is split up equally between the schools. The rest is divvyed out based on equity. That means the schools will get more funding if they have more students who are unhoused, English language learners, and/or BIPOC (Black, Indigenous and people of color.)
There are now two other equity school groups.
There is a group in West Seattle called the West Seattle Public School Equity Fund. Their vision:
The West Seattle Public School Equity Fund operates simply: a portion of the PTA budgets from well resourced public elementary (and K8) West Seattle schools is contributed to a shared fund, which is managed by parent and/or staff advisors from each of the participating schools. The funds are then distributed annually to historically under-resourced public elementary (and K8) West Seattle schools.
The formula to determine who is eligible to receive funds and how the funds will be split is set by the Advisory Committee on an annual basis. The Advisory Committee includes 1-2 representatives from every contributing and recipient school, which included Concord, Gatewood, Genesee Hill, Highland Park, Lafayette, Pathfinder, Roxhill Sanislo and West Seattle for the inaugural year.
There are 10 schools involved in the group but it is unclear to me which ones receive the funds.
Now there is another group - the Central and North Seattle Schools PTA Alliance - that is raising funds for two low-income schools - Viewlands Elementary and Lowell Elementary. Their member schools are:
Lowell Elementary
Loyal Heights Elementary
Sacajawea Elementary
Viewlands Elementary
Wedgwood Elementary
West Woodland Elementary
We believe Seattle Schools is responsible for funding schools equitably.
I'll have more to say on that point later on.
The money is a "shared resource," not a gift. There is no tracking by the donating schools of how the funds are used.
When PTAs at well-resourced schools raise additional funds (that are unrestricted and can be directed by the families who raise the money) this contributes to a widening gap between students at different schools.
I'll quibble over that "unrestricted" term because from my experience, schools CAN and DO put restrictions in. For example, Ingraham High School has a PTO and their principal has made it clear that he doesn't want to pay for full-time staff from PTO funds.
They are managed by the Alliance and this is something to know about that:
Please note that the Alliance retains 6% of every donation to cover a portion of the program costs. Donors giving online have the option to cover this administrative fee so that the sponsored group receives 100% of the gift.
To note, the Washington State PTSA does NOT support funding of staff for several reasons and this one is good:
Finally, there is a potential impact on the PTA association and the board of directors to consider as well. PTAs who have provided funds to pay for staff have been named in wrongful termination lawsuits when future boards cut funding and staff was let go. PTAs may not have fully vetted grant policies or insurance to protect them in these instances.
A few thoughts:
- It is unclear to me that in all cases PTAs are involved. As a former PTA board member and former co-president at Roosevelt High, I
can tell you that money shifts have to have a vote. Maybe the PTAs are
not directly involved? It's a mystery. I'll have to contact these three groups for clarification.
-It is odd to me that NONE of these groups nor the more vocal SPS directors on this topic EVER mention/ask for the district to STOP allowing funding for teachers and/or other staff. There could be several reasons for this.
The directors surely know that the district LOVES these free employees. It certainly supports their dual-language model at a couple of those schools.
I find it INCREDIBLY hypocritical for directors not to say something publicly about this part of the discussion but want to slam parents at better-off schools. Directors heal thyself.
And for some people who head these new groups, I see some names that indicate SCPTSA involvement so those people know this.
- Other districts do NOT allow teachers to be paid for. I cannot speak to other specialty staff tutors, artists in residence, etc.
- Field trips often get singled out as unfair. SCPTSA, if this really is an issue that they believe needs to be addressed, then they should do that. Because I would bet that the district doesn't track this data in a meaningful way. I would suppose that every school, for any given field trip, has to notify the district especially if transportation is involved.
But the SCPTSA is in a better position to ask member schools about the number and nature of field trips so that it would be possible to know who is doing what.
- What is interesting to me is that when I did a spot-check of a couple of schools in the new Central and North Seattle Schools PTA Alliance, I found some interesting items.
1. Wedgwood PTA does not have any info on this initiative at their webpage. Maybe it's too new? I didn't find any mention in their newsletter and you'd think you might given that fundraising dollars are not going to all stay at the school. FYI, as of April, Wedgwood has a new principal, Kelly Vancil.
2. West Woodland PTA has no info either at their webpage.
- As a committee, we learned that while some schools had sizable reserves that were not being used during the pandemic, other schools lapsed in their PTA membership fees because they used all the funds they had available to pay families' monthly rents/mortgages so those students wouldn’t become unhoused.
Gotta say, I've heard this before and I wish that someone would NAME THAT SCHOOL that sat on money during the pandemic. I could think of a couple of good reasons they did so but somehow it is a ding against that school. If no one can show proof of what school it was, then I think it is some urban legend.
- We believe Seattle Schools is responsible for funding schools equitably.
That statement needs fleshing out because I would say that, legally, SPS has to fund schools equally. For some schools, they use federal dollars to fund them equitably. Meaning, making sure that schools with more students with challenges have dollars to support them.
Now, in some cases, like the mental health dollars that SPS is receiving from the City, SPS is choosing to take those dollars mostly to high schools and particularly to schools that have had direct student safety issues.
What is being talked about here is extra staff and more enrichment opportunities at different schools.
As previously mentioned, if SPS wanted to act equitably, they would end allowing staff to be paid for by PTA funds.
If SPS wanted to act equitably, they would fund field trips especially in the lower grades for schools that don't have PTA dollars for that. Former Superintendent Denise Juneau said she wanted to direct money towards that effort. Didn't happen.
Things could look a LOT more equitable if the district itself acted. But it doesn't and there's no one on the Board holding their feet to the fire. No, the finger pointing is always at parents. Hmm.
Comments
SP
get real
Why do parents have to pay for recess supervision and lunchroom monitors and counselors and librarians and interventionists? This is an unfair child tax. Our schools are supposed to be amply funded per the state constitution. Amply funded schools should not require parents to pay for recess supervision. Where is the state?!
-Whiplash B.S.
This is all driven by virtue signaling white parents who never talk to families of color and aren’t actually interested in hearing from them. Instead these privileged white parents think equity means taking a shot at other white parents rather than actually fixing the root of the problem.
You never see these SCPTA leaders doing advocacy for more state funding for public schools. When the legislature was debating a wealth tax that would have funded public schools these regional PTA fund sharing groups weren’t mobilizing people to contact legislators, they were instead doing their own fundraising work.
Nothing will change or get better until we solve the actual inequity in school funding - the fact that white billionaires get away with paying a pittance of their fortunes while our schools suffer with insufficient funds. These collaborative regional PTA efforts are a waste of time and won’t change a thing, but at least the people leading it will feel better about themselves for a few months.
Tax Bezos
The point is that these things are a band aid. Fixing the tax structure will take much longer than my kids will be in school. And most if WA state doesn’t want to be bothered with fixing a “Seattle problem” (terrible financial oversight) so here we are.
And I agree it is used as a tool to pit parents against each other rather than district leaders taking any accountability for shortcomings.
Class warfare sells
“ For the general public, understanding how special education resources are spent in the State of Washington can be overwhelming.
SCPTSA wants to inform the public how we as a community can work together to make sure that all students, regardless of ability, can receive a free public education
House Bill 1436 will be in Assignments Thursday at 4:00p. m.
1436 is the Chamber of Special Education bill that supports full funding of Special Education for all Washington students.
The Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction (OSPI) "requests the Legislature to remove the 13.5% cap on state funding for special education"
and increase the stacked special education multiplier to fully cover the cost of special education services and sustain state investment in inclusion practices."
Register "PRO" today
https://tinyurl.com/specialeducation1436
If you would like to testify in person or remotely, please get in touch with President Sam Fogg at president@scptsa.org “
Paying Attention
I am all for stripping billionaires down to their tighty-whities and marching them through the streets, but it's an illusion that this would change anything in school finance.
The importance of PTA funding is that it's a revenue stream that cannot possibly be claimed for teacher comp. It's the only sustainable way to fund the small luxuries at the building level, like supplies, recess and lunch room supervision, office staff, intervention, etc. that make schools happy places. That is the proper, urgent role of PTAs.
Yes, there are issues. It works best at schools with upscale families who can afford to make the contributions. Some high-achieving PTA parents will be tempted to over-reach and fund counselor, nurse, and even teacher positions. Some PTAs will be hijacked by political radicals, who will alienate the other parents and only be able to raise enough funds to fill the walls with social justice posters. But lots can go right also, if people understand what PTAs are good for.
There was a PTA that worked their fingers to the bone to create a wheel chair accessible playground for special education children.
Hampson felt it necessary to scold the parent for having raised funds and spent uncountable time creating a playground for special education students. The fact that the parent created an accessible playground for special education students while district playground funds could flow to low income schools was lost.
PTA dollars are the only way to assure the district doesn’t flow to highly paid bureaucrats. Hampson et.al wants the district to involve themselves with PTA funding which will direct $$ to bureaucrats and further diminish classroom dollars.
If this is the big deal that SCPTSA believes is so important, why no messaging from them?
also have you noticed that when school enrollments dropped our taxes didn't go down.
I really wish the powers could give us a number and say "This is how much we need period" then we could work up a package to meet that number eliminating funding as the problem.
New leaders
Never stops
And you are right to ask why is the superintendent involved in the memorial stadium sign off? This clearly a decision for the school board. When is the BS going to stop.
--con job
Let’s form a committee!
Let’s organize!!
Let’s having meetings!!! LOTS and LOTS of meetings!!!
Let’s garner media attention!!!
Let’s create an IMPORTANT task force DOING important *work*!!!
Let’s make sure OUR advisory coop is diverse & representative BIPOC!!
Etcetera, etcetera, etcetera
Barf.
Newsflash: hey, guess what?! You with a few extra bucks spare? You don’t need a committee or a 501(c) three, you can just contact the school and give money directly. Bailey Gatzert Elementary, Maple Elementary, Aki Kurose middle school, Rainier Beach High School. Go for it.
No whining no crying no fussing no handwringing just write the damn check. Really, it is that simple, that straight forward.
No need to virtue signal, or grandstand, or waste people’s time.
Seriously.
Yes, it is that simple.
Many years ago, Melissa featured a story on this blog about Rainier Beach needing money for their IB program, I immediately hit Paypal and sent the money. Great kids working really hard at school with a population disproportionally comprised of free and reduced lunch students. I think I was one of two people who sent money. There was no cavalcade despite her excellent blog post.
PTAs/PTOs are not the problem. Anytime you can get families investing their time or money into the school her kids, attend or the ones that are simply in their neighborhood, that’s a positive, that should be encouraged, not pissed on because some other neighborhood can’t manage to enjoy that same great thing.
Besides, whatever inequities exist between the buildings is not the fault of the pta. This isn’t even a systemic problem: we have a weighted staffing standard, now called weighted student standard, as well as the basic education allotment from the state, so the kids are funded proportionally, depending on their attributes, i.e. special ed, English language learners, etc. If you want to blame anything, urban, planning with exclusionary zoning, creating artificial Clines of real estate value truly creates SES stratified neighborhoods which in turn stratifies schools. But that’s not sexy, because you can’t blame the school or teachers or systemic racism for basic zoning laws, that’s a city council concerned.
On top of that, schools get extra funding, depending on their overall population characteristics.
It was fascinating to me that in our elementary school, my child was worth less than $8000, but in the school sharing our location, they were getting $17,000 per student, and no they were not disproportionately wildly SpEd and ELL…
John Rogers PTA, a small elementary school, maybe 220 kids at the time, raised about $40,000, and that was directed to pay for music (so that all fourth and fifth graders wanting it could participate ) and half a counselor which they felt was urgently required for their students. In the end, they ended up eliminating music for fourth graders because they didn’t end up with enough money and the teachers were not supportive because they didn’t like having pull out on their classroom during direct instruction time.
Bottom line is pta funds are never going to be able to approach the largess of actual governmental funding, and, parents are always going to spend money on their own kids, and there is nothing wrong about that.
Crappy curriculum, like readers and writers workshop, or every day gmath, are far more detrimental to students in high poverty buildings than the lack of PTA money. Put the focus where the focus needs to be, on the actual district, and its pathetic, destructive, politicized, education policies.
Blue Bus
I want to highlight their phrasing around some students being worth more dollars to the district than other students.
Perhaps SPS isn't asking about why families aren't enrolling their students is because the low-yield students are leaving.
Now, the big focus is making Olympia pay more for the high-yield students.
SP
BINGO
cerveza azul
Where's my "equity"?