Fundraising Softens Pain of School Budget Cuts

One evening last April, as the San Juan Unified School District was contemplating ever-deeper budget cuts, parents at Del Dayo Elementary School turned out to the Radisson Hotel in Sacramento for a Hollywood-themed auction to benefit the school. School supporters paid $50 per couple to bid on children’s art projects, racquetball club memberships and trips to Napa and Puerto Vallarta.

The event netted about $70,000 for the school, located in an affluent area of Carmichael. That’s about ten times more than David Reese Elementary School in Florin raised from private sources all year, according to Principal Jenifer Avey.

An event like the auction “would not be feasible at all at our school” says Avey of David Reese, where more than three quarters of students are eligible for free or reduced-price lunch.

In the Sacramento area and statewide, shrinking education funding is forcing public schools to rely ever more heavily on independent fundraising by Parent Teacher Associations and other community groups. It’s a trend that favors richer areas, where parents have deeper pockets. It also underscores the squeeze on schools in middle class neighborhoods, which often struggle to raise money, but lack the extra funding the feds give to schools in poorer areas.

“There’s a very strong correlation between income and voluntary contributions within school districts,” said Eric Brunner, an associate professor of economics at Quinnipiac University who has studied school fundraising in California. “You’re going to see wealthier schools be able to raise more money.”

A Patch look at public schools in several Sacramento-area communities found wide variations in the amount of money schools were able to raise to support programs like art, music and libraries.

in Rosemont was able to raise more than $20,000 this year, and was the top-grossing Box Tops for Education Program school in its district. The money was able to fund a crossing guard, a talent show, movie nights and more.

, which raised about $13,000 this year, was able to fund six-graders' field trips to Sly Park.

At Valley High School in Sacramento, located in an area with the highest foreclosure rate in the county, Principal Keven MacDonald said the band program tried raising money through cookie sales last year with “pretty dismal” results.

How much did the students raise? “Less than $20,” MacDonald said.

Meanwhile, at Pleasant Grove Elementary in Elk Grove, where just 20 percent of kids are classified as low-income, the school’s ‘Denim and Diamonds’ auction raised $34,000 this year to pay for everything from field trips to Kleenex and photocopies.

In many cases, schools in working- and middle-class neighborhoods feel the pinch most. Schools with the highest numbers of low-income students, like Valley and David Reese, are eligible for extra federal funding under a program known as Title I. But at middle-class schools, those grants aren’t available, while parents still have less disposable income than in previous years to spend on raffles and candy sales.

“Everyone is losing their job,” said Indira Bhatti, Vice Principal at Roy Herburger Elementary in Elk Grove, located in a neighborhood of modest homes. “Sometimes kids have to sell things and it’s hard for them to sell and the parents to buy.”

Beth Albiani, the PTA president at Pleasant Grove Elementary, knows her school has an advantage.

“We live in a pretty affluent area, where there’s an expectation that parents will come through and they have consistently,” she said. “But it’s those middle schools that are going to have a hard time. We’re getting squeezed plenty but I can’t even imagine if I was there.”

Pleasant Grove also has something else going for it, according to Brunner: It’s one of the smaller elementary schools in the Elk Grove Unified School District, and small schools tend to raise more.

“Suppose you’re in a school with 100 kids,” he said. “You probably know almost all the parents and if you don’t contribute there’s probably some stigma attached to that. In a school with 1,000 kids, you’re just one of many faces.”

Patch is taking an ongoing look at private fundraising for public schools in the Sacramento area. Have you been successful in raising money for your child's school? Have you run into challenges? We'd like to hear your experiences. Email felicia.mello@patch.com.

Correction: An earlier version of this story misspelled Indira Bhatti's name. Rosemont Patch regrets the error.

Editors Cody Kitaura, Joshua Staab and Victor Calderon also contributed to this report.