How Pennies Trickling Down To School Sites Get Amplified
Among the misconceptions that persist in the wake of Proposition 13’s ruinous toll on our public school system, is the notion that a school’s stakeholders will just personally make-up, or supplement the state’s funding liability.
The fallacy belies the fantasy that really, there is sufficient money available, it’s just (pick one) {improperly distributed/siphoned/spent/budgeted}. This is the caricature conveyed at a recent West Hollywood City Council meeting discussing a pernicious district maneuver that would flatten socioeconomic diversity by displacing Laurel’s regular K8 school with a specialized magnet school, gratuitously restrictive in both enrollment age and curricular focus. A city councilmember (@4:49.10) suggested then that “more affluent” parents could “do an event and … raise several hundred thousand dollars” while less affluent schools “might be able to raise $70-$80K.”
Indeed there is a disparity in fundraising capacity between schools, but as it happens neither of these extremes accurately reflects modern fundraising or backfilling of missing services. A few schools raise funds prodigiously and exclusively for their pupils to be sure, but most schools raise nothing at all. The entire practice is tremendously inequitable and inefficient; the expectation is socially and perhaps academically destructive.
To better understand the actual extent and capacity of “extracurricular” fundraising at schools, each of the 615 elementary schools, 182 middle schools and 168 high schools in LAUSD’s footprint – including regular district and charters whether managed independently from or “affiliated” with their chartering agency – was randomized. This data set is described here. SPAN schools including grades from one or more school type {elementary-middle-high}, are defined by the CONTINUE READING: How Pennies Trickling Down To School Sites Get Amplified – redqueeninla
