Why Schools Are Passing the Hat

By Ellie McGrath

Neighborhood fund raising keeps quality in the classroom

Florence Phillips, 46, is a professional Florence Phillips, 46, is a professional actress with a very special audience: the students in the Cos Cob School in Connecticut. As the school's artist-in-residence, she flies through fairy tales, acts out scenes from Shakespeare and introduces the youngsters to the poetry of Whitman, Shelley and Tennyson. From parents she gets a standing ovation. Last month the Cos Cob PTA held a fund-raising party with 1,000 guests paying $1 a head. Reason: the local school budget does not cover her salary, and the PTA must raise $3,000 a year to keep Phillips in the classroom. The parents are happy to get involved, says Principal Dominic Butera, because they get "very excited when they listen to their children reading and reciting great works of poetry."

Such unorthodox private support of everything from teachers' salaries to new computers is on the rise in the U.S. as the question of who will pay for public schools becomes ever more complex. Local property taxes once were the chief source of public school funding. But a series of court decisions over the past decade decreed that this method inevitably led to inequity: schools in well-to-do districts were qualitatively better than those in poor areas. Instead, since 1980, states have provided nearly 50% of schools' public funds, while the rest comes from local and Federal governments. Tax revolts have even further reduced local revenues. One result is that more and more school districts are trying to supplement their budgets by passing hats instead of raising taxes.

Across the country, private aid to public schools is now running between $1 billion and $2 billion a year, estimates Hayden Smith of the Council for Financial Aid to Education. That compares with more than $116 billion in government support in the last school year. The money is coming from energetic, well-heeled PTAs, from local education foundations and from corporate donors. Although the schools welcome this new source of needed revenue, some educators wonder if the trend will reinforce the imbalance between affluent and poor districts.

Certainly, in middle-class communities, parents are flocking to help out their schools. PTA membership jumped by 70,000 in the past school year, reversing a 20-year decline. Washington State PTA President Mary Ann Laramore notes that four years ago, $3,000 was considered a big budget for a PTA, but today "we're seeing budgets of $10,000 to $12,000." The Smoke Rise Elementary School in the Atlanta suburb of Stone Mountain boasts a lab with 14 Apple II computers, 13 of which were bought by the PTA. The Lafayette parent group in Washington, B.C., which raises $40,000 a year from such projects as a flea market and an international-food festival, not only supports the salaries of a nurse and two teachers but pays for science equipment and library books. At Columbia Elementary School in DeKalb County, Ga., where 40% of students receive free or reduced-price lunches, parents have managed to raise $2,000 a year to buy equipment, including a computer.

Parents have also got together with community leaders to establish local school-financing groups, many of which are incorporated as foundations. California has at least 200 such groups, more than any other state. One is the Shoreline Trust for Education Programs and Services, which provides 100 volunteers who maintain seven Marin County parks, in exchange for $1,000 a month in county funds to the Shoreline Unified School District. Says the trust's co-founder Peter Douglas: "We've been able to provide enough funding to avoid laying off even one teacher." The Beverly Hills Education Foundation holds a $ 150-a-ticket dinner each year at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel and receives proceeds from a celebrity basketball game, partly to support a writing skills center and a math tutor.

Business is also doing its part: a study Business is also doing its part: a study of 600 major corporations by the Council for Financial Aid to Education shows that 300 companies are giving money to pre-college education, up from a handful three years ago. For example, Hewlett Packard provided a math and computer course for teachers in Montgomery County, Md. School officials in Fairfax County, Va., last month entertained executives from such companies as Xerox and Coca-Cola in search of funds for high-technology equipment.

Because the strongest PTAs and richest foundations tend to flourish in wealthier communities, some educators are concerned that private aid is not doing enough for poorer school districts. The PTA budgets of other districts sadden Francis Cook, principal of Turner elementary, an inner-city school in Washington. "I wish we had one-tenth of that money," he says. "We need more teachers, more equipment, computer hardware, software, almost everything." Wealthier suburbs are acutely aware of the problem. Says Virginia Fleischman, president of a parent group in Washington's Cleveland Park neighborhood, which has a $24,000 annual budget: "I hate to say it, but imbalance is a reality. Parents get involved in their schools for their children's sake."

Large foundations are aiming to aid the neediest public schools. The Ford Foundation last year earmarked $6 million to be used over five years to help teachers in urban schools improve their programs. The San Francisco Education Fund, one of the nation's leading school foundations, is supporting a program to help non-English speaking children of immigrants adjust to American classrooms. The Washington Parent Group Fund provides support for activities such as creative writing and dance workshops for 19 lower-income Washington schools.

Educators say that the growth of PTAs and foundations is bringing back an essential element to the public schools: community support. San Francisco Education Fund Director Gladys Thacher points out that fund raising has reached previously uninvolved people who now "can stand up and care about public education." Fred Rundle, principal of a Georgia elementary school that has been helped by an energetic PTA, agrees: "A school is only as good as the community wants it to be." --By Elite McGrath. Reported by Patricia Delaney/Washington and Reported by Patricia Delaney/Washington and Dorothy Ferenbaugh/New York, with other bureaus

With reporting by Patricia Delaney, Dorothy Ferenbaugh This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.