Back to School

The February 7th issue of Time Magazine has a story about an issue I’ve written about before – private money funding “extras” in public schools.

 

Where do you draw the line? PTA’s at some schools have become nothing more than fundraising machines to pay for things like technology, supplies, and field trips for their school. Some people believe that private foundations create inequality in the school system and it has raised temperatures in PTA’s and school systems across America.

 

On the one hand, it isn’t fair that one public school has more than another school, is it? But is it fair that a school whose parents want to help aren’t allowed to because another one can’t?

 

One of the biggest controversies is using private money to fund teachers. If a school system budget doesn’t allow for art and music, is it okay for parents to pay the art teacher themselves?

 

I have mixed feelings about this. I wish Knox County would abolish the foundations for individual schools and merge them all together into a single one that would benefit all the schools. It has been done – from the article:

 

While equity often causes fights between PTAs, sometimes parent groups in socioeconomically diverse districts are willing to look out for each other. When the Bellingham, Wash., district cut a conservation program from its budget, the PTA at Carl Cozier — whose leaders say it could have funded the field trip for its own students — asked to spearhead a fundraising campaign so that every third-grader in the district’s 14 elementary schools could attend. The district green-lighted the proposal, and PTAs throughout Bellingham joined forces to foot the $30,000 bill.

What’s your take on private foundations? Do you think the PTA’s in Knox County spend too much effort on fundraising? Is private funding for a specific school a good or bad thing?

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