Just a few thoughts before I go help my six-year-old make dinner. (She chose the menu and did the shopping!)
A writing friend e-mailed me this very sensible proposal:
I hope that this budget / tax shakeout may turn out to be good for us long term. I would like to see all levels of government work within budgets. Meanwhile responsibility may have to shift back to families and local communities for funding what’s important to us, libraries, parks, schools, arts, or ________, and perhaps that’s where it should reside and should have resided all along. I’ve always admired the way private school communities raise money and build endowment funds. Why not do that for public schools? Not a new idea… Scotts Valley and Santa Cruz City each have their foundations. Our parks and libraries each have their “Friends of” support groups. Giving generously has always has been a big part of our culture and if you think about it, it’s voluntary self-taxation.
I like the idea, but then again, I’ve been involved with relatively poor public schools, relatively wealthy public schools, and a number of private schools. This is what I replied (though I just edited it for clarity):
The problem with endowments and other fundraising for public schools is that it does great things for Palo Alto, but very little for Watsonville. I was positively shocked when I found out how much Linscott raises in their auction. Very little compared to other schools I know of. Many of their families are lower-middle-income, and it’s a huge financial burden for them to take part in a charter school that requires them to take a half-day off work each week. So they gave very little, and the community is so poor that Linscott looks rich in comparison. And when corporate donors look at Linscott, they say, boy, why should I give to a school like Linscott where the parents are working, when there’s all these schools stricken with real, extreme poverty?
The result is you get our huge variation in this county. Believe me, step a foot into PVUSD (Pajaro Valley Unified School District, where most of our poorest schools are) and you’re in a different world. I know and have heard of so many people who fight the system or lie to get their kids into other school systems.
So since public school is supposed to be equitable, what do we do? Parents aren’t going to fundraise if it doesn’t help their school. As a result, personally I actually believe the polar opposite: I believe that public schools shouldn’t be able to fundraise at all. There should be one non-profit fund that corporations and individuals donate to, and the money gets split up equitably. When parents in Scotts Valley or Palo Alto see that their school’s toilets are all broken and the school can’t afford another janitor, then perhaps they will start to vote to send more money to the schools!
That’s my 2 cents for the day. Off to make dinner!
