‘It’s Never Just About the Cupcake’
Dave Sanders for The New York Times
FUND-RAISING At Public School 295 in Brooklyn, bake sales raise money for good causes. But they can also cause tension between affluent and less-well-off parents.
By KYLE SPENCER
Published: March 16, 2012
THE Cupcake Wars came to Public School 295 in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, in October.
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Ángel Franco/The New York Times
HELPING Carmen Reyes, a PTA president in Harlem, helped families afford a fund-raising fair.
The Parent-Teacher Association’s decision to raise the price of a cupcake at its monthly bake sale — to $1, from 50 cents — was supposed to be a simple way to raise extra money in the face of city budget cuts.
Instead, in a neighborhood whose median household income leaped to $60,184 in 2010 from $34,878 a decade before, the change generated unexpected ire, pitting cash-short parents against volunteer bakers, and
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• Public school is rarely free. But how expensive is it, really? After five years of cuts to school budgets, New York City parents are being asked to contribute much more. Add in expenses for ambitious and enriching school and after-school activities, programs, trips, events, sports and extras like school pictures and yearbooks -- and the dollars mount.
SchoolBook’s journalists want to figure out how much New York City public school parents are spending on school-related expenses – and for what. How do your school's expenses stack up against others across the city? Are the costs higher than in the past? And what expense has taxed – or irritated -- parents the most?
