Kristen Calis, Jessica Cunha and Rosie-Ann Grover
June 7, 2012
The first in a three-part Metroland Special Report examining the practice of school fundraising in Ontario schools.
In an affluent neighbourhood in the nation’s capital, a school that the prime minister’s children once attended is flush with cash. The money comes from serious fundraising that brings in $60,000 just in pizza lunches and a well-attended book fair.
Rockcliffe Park Public School — a kindergarten to Grade 6 school with a large proportion of children from area embassies — does not disclose the total it brings in through fundraising by its heavily involved parents, students and teachers.
But school council minutes show it had more than enough to spend $12,000 on hip-hop and drumming sessions for the arts program, a cricket skills tune-up and new equipment for the gym. Funds from the book fair covered the $5,000 for this year’s author workshop. It brings writers such as Alphabeasts sensation Wallace Edwards, a Governor General’s Award winner, to the school for — as the website puts it — “the extraordinary experience to have the
opportunity to converse with an author of a book you have just read and loved!”
Five kilometres away, at Queen Mary Street Public School, celebrated author meet-ups just don’t happen. This school, where the majority of students are from homes where English is a second language, is lucky if it raises $500 in a year, says Chris Ellis, who sits on four Ottawa school councils.
Any fundraising proceeds that do come in go to the deficit-ridden milk program or to subsidize field trips for families struggling on an average parent income of $29,000, compared with $155,000 at Rockcliffe Park (figures from the Fraser Institute). An Arabic- and Somali-speaking multicultural liaison officer comes to Queen Mary twice a week.
is the irony of it; the schools that are most challenged — and you could arguably say have the greatest need for additional resources — are the very schools that find it hard to raise funds.”
Similar disparities exist across Ontario, where the top 10 per cent of
fundraising schools bring in the same amount of money as the bottom 75 per cent combined, according to People for Education’s 2012 report on Ontario’s publicly funded schools.
“You can see in that way how big the gap is,” says Annie Kidder, executive director of the parent-led organization. Society, not just parents, needs to be concerned with the gap.
“It’s the next generation of society that’s being educated,” she says. “It will have an impact on everybody.”
It means that schools with the ability to raise large sums can significantly enrich their students’ education with high-tech learning aids such as laptops and SMART Boards. But in many schools, fundraising isn’t just for the frills. It’s for classroom basics such as air conditioning and books or breakfast programs.
fundraising gaps as large as half a million dollars between schools in the same board. It also underscored how firmly money from bake sales, car washes and other fundraising has become entrenched in the education system.
Concern is growing about the overuse of fundraising — and the disparities it creates — at a time when public money is tightening under the McGuinty government’s austerity drive. And despite the province’s introduction last month of the first-ever guidelines for fundraising, there still are no formal rules, in the form of province-wide regulations, to govern the vast amounts of money collected. (see sidebar)
How much money do Ontario schools fundraise? Many boards don’t want to say. Metroland surveyed 28 English public and Catholic school boards across Ontario and found more than half were reluctant to provide financial information.
Fundraising is a sensitive issue, especially when disclosure of inequities is possible. In
Waterloo, a public school board representative declined to provide a breakdown of funds raised, saying it would allow the public to see disparities. In Hamilton’s public board, teachers and principals were given scripts on how to respond to Metroland reporters.
Only 11 of the 28 school boards surveyed provided their fundraising total. Fundraising in those boards pumped $26 million into their 788 schools. The remaining 17 boards provided only a broad figure that includes fundraising but is mixed in with other revenue (see chart).
In boards that provided school-by-school breakdowns, there are significant gaps in money raised. In Halton’s public board, half a million dollars separates White Oaks Secondary in Oakville, which raised $511,000 last year, from Acton District High School, which took in just $8,000. There’s a significant difference in the size of the schools (2,100 at White Oaks; 546 in the small community of Acton) but the Acton school took in proportionally less.
In York, more than $125,000 separates two elementary schools within the same board. St. Clare Catholic School, located in a wealthy Woodbridge neighbourhood, brought in $131,000. In a less affluent area in Markham, St. Francis Xavier Catholic Elementary School raised just $4,000. At Hamilton’s St. Joseph Catholic elementary school where parent involvement is high, the school took in $192,000. Five kilometres away in the north end of the city, St. Lawrence elementary brought in $9,800.
Critics, school associations and parents say the need to fundraise is the result of inadequate funding, making it necessary for schools to bulk up on private dollars, sometimes even for the basics.
“Fundraising is so political. It’s basically a fallout. It’s a symptom of a bigger issue in public education,” says Catherine Fife, president of the Ontario Public School Boards’ Association, which has been calling for a funding model review for a number of years.
Education Minister Laurel Broten says Ontario increased education funding to $20.3 billion in the 2010-11 school year, an increase of $6.5 billion — or 45 per cent — since 2003, excluding capital programs.
NDP education critic Peter Tabuns says students attending schools with the ability to fundraise large amounts will likely have better music and art classes, more computers and school trips.
“You’ll see a richer educational experience for the children, and for the schools that have no money, things will be tighter,” Tabuns says. “They will have less access to computers, to textbooks, what we see as integral or important parts of a good, solid education.”
Fundraising inequities have been building for more than 20 years, says Kidder, of People for Education.
“It’s really important to remember that kind of the fundamental premise of public education is to crassly provide a level playing field for kids or to overcome intergenerational cycles of poverty,” she says. “All children should have a fairly equitable chance for success and if you start to entrench fundraising as a core component of the funding for education, the danger is that you actually increase the inequity rather than narrow it.”
More opportunities come with the requirement for more money. And some schools don’t want to share.
Bayview Hill Elementary’s school council, fearful of an initiative forcing them to share the wealth generated, discussed a strategy at a school council meeting on Nov. 28, 2011. The minutes posted on their website state, “We have an opening balance of $142,000 from last year, and we must use this money before the province moves to leveling the playing field and distributes the money amongst other schools.”
Co-chair of the school council Wendy Steinberg credits the 800 students, dedicated parent volunteers and successful weekly pizza lunches for the school’s successful fundraising numbers.
“We’re all for inclusivity and diversity,” she says, “but we worked hard for that money.”
Steinberg feels the money should stay within the Bayview Hill community in York Region where the average parent income at the school is $117,800.
In less affluent pockets of the province, families just don’t have the money to rally around expensive fundraising projects.
At Bennetto School in Hamilton, where parents make $18,400, there isn’t any additional money floating around. Their primary focus is the breakfast program to make sure students have food to start the day.
“I get mixed feelings when I think about students in different parts of the same board having different opportunities based on what is raised through parent fundraising,” says Greg Reader, president of the school council for this north end community, historically considered to be on the “wrong side of the tracks.”
Is Fundraising Fever creating a
two-tiered education system?
Kristen Calis, Jessica Cunha and Rosie-Ann Grover
June 8, 2012
The third in a three-part Metroland Special Report examining the practice of school fundraising in Ontario schools.
The best way to end the Ontario school system’s reliance on fundraising is to pour more money into public education, parents, teachers and critics say.
“We are getting increasingly (to be) a two-tiered
education system,” says NDP education critic Peter Tabuns. “That speaks to the need for adequate funding of the education system so parents don’t feel compelled to raise money.”
Fundraising Fever, a Metroland Special Report,
shows that concerns about overuse of fundraising — and the disparities it creates — are growing province-wide.
Potential solutions also include a proposal by the advocacy group People for Education, which wants a provincial Equity in Education grant created to reduce inequities triggered by
fundraising. School boards are pushing for an evaluation of provincial education funding to determine whether the current model is fair to all students.
“The pressure to fundraise will only grow as boards try to meet the austerity measures of provincial governments,” says Catherine Fife, president of the Ontario Public School Boards’ Association. “We can’t go to our parent councils or school councils and keep asking for money.”
There’s no question money is tight. The McGuinty government is starting consultations this fall to cut $10 million from school board administration budgets by 2013-14.
Some groups, including Social Planning Toronto, believe fundraising should be banned outright, except for raising dollars for external charities.
“I’d rather not have it,” says Chris Ellis, who sits on four school councils in Ottawa. “I’d like for schools to not be able to raise funds for their own use so then parents in those affluent areas might become involved and speak up for greater funding for the education system.”
The Coalition Against Public School Inequality suggests a cap on school fundraising. A percentage of each school’s profits above and beyond the limit would go into an equalization fund to help disadvantaged schools.
But the Ontario Federation of Home and School Associations says a limit would be too restrictive.
“We actually don’t want somebody to say you have to stop here. It’s up to the parents to decide how much they want to do or whether they’ve had enough,” says Lee Gowers, president of the group.
Raising property taxes would be a controversial solution, but “that’s how you address inequity,
unpopularly, through taxes,” says Annie Kidder, executive director of People for Education. “At some point, we have to bite the bullet and go, ‘That’s what taxes pay for.’ If we want our kids to have books in their libraries, we have to pay taxes.”
Critics say the province should outline exactly what materials, activities and programs should be available — at no cost to parents — in all Ontario schools. Currently, it’s OK to raise funds for library books, gym equipment and musical instruments.
“You need to start with the policy and the vision and laying out concretely what should be there in schools,” says Kidder. “Then you start talking about how you fund it to ensure it’s fair and equitable.”
There is also interest in a board-wide mentorship program where successful fundraising schools
The rules under Ontario's new guidelines
The Ontario government says new guidelines released in May make clear that school fundraising is supposed to complement — not replace — public funds for education.
But critics say the fundraising “best practices” have no teeth and do nothing to address the massive disparity in fundraising between affluent and have-not schools.
“There are so many grey areas,” says Annie Kidder of People for Education, an advocacy group. “There are so many areas that are open to interpretation.”
The guidelines — which are only suggestions, not enforceable regulations — stipulate that money raised by parents, students and teachers to benefit their schools can’t be used for learning materials or textbooks.
But schools can continue to fundraise for things like sports equipment, musical instruments, technology and the arts. The guidelines suggest — but do not require — that schools publicly report how much their schools raise annually.
NDP education critic Peter Tabuns says the recommendations have no teeth.
partner with those that need a hand, helping to reduce the gap in funds raised.
“To me, that’s how successful fundraising can be done, really sharing the best practices,” says parent Roxanne Horwitz, who sits on the St. Bernadette Catholic School council in Ajax
Education foundations across the province continue to play a role, helping to reduce inequities in opportunity between well-off and disadvantaged schools. There is no severe pressure on schools to raise funds for things like field trips because many foundations will cover those costs.
“Having a central education
foundation completely changes the landscape for children in a city,” says Jane Fulton, executive director of the Education
Foundation of Ottawa. “We make sure that no student is left out.”
Small businesses and large corporations continue to work to bridge the gap by providing donations and incentive programs.
“That’s what we are counting on, businesses in the community,” says Luce Paradis, principal at Assumption Catholic School in Ottawa. The school is located in a low-income area and doesn’t usually host fundraisers. Without corporate donations, it wouldn’t be able to reach its goal of $50,000 for a new play structure. “We have to outsource a little bit.”
The Campbell’s Labels For Education program, for example, invites schools to collect labels from Campbell’s products, such as soup cans and Goldfish crackers, and redeem them for educational resources from books to gym equipment. A number of other companies, such as Chapters, Boston Pizza and McDonald’s, host special events that encourage parents to purchase their products and then give a portion of sales back to local schools.
Others, such as the Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario, believe businesses don’t belong in public schools.
Fundraising
Under the new guidelines, the following are acceptable uses of fundraising dollars:
* Extracurricular activities, such as entry fees for sports competitions, team uniforms and the school band
* Extracurricular band instruments, audiovisual equipment and sports equipment; supplies that complement items funded through the ministry
* Field trips or other excursions, guest speakers or presentations * Schoolyard improvement projects, such as playground
equipment, shade structures or gardens
* Upgrades to sporting facilities, such as running tracks, installation of artificial turf or scoreboards
* Activities unique to the denominational or cultural character of the school
* Assistance funds to benefit students; ceremonies, awards, scholarships and bursaries
Under the new guidelines, the following are unacceptable uses of fundraising dollars:
* Classroom materials and textbooks; items funded through provincial grants
* Facility renewal, maintenance or upgrades such as structural repairs or replacing flooring due to wear and tear
* Infrastructure improvements that increase student capacity such as classrooms, additions, gyms and labs
* Administrative expenses not associated with fundraising * Professional development, support for teacher attendance at
“It’s a tempting road because it’s a quick fix to the funding situation,” says Kawartha Pine Ridge ETFO president David Wing. “Children are already bombarded enough with commercial
messages.”
DEFINITIONS
Fundraising: Fundraising is defined in this report as an activity in the school community conducted by parents, students and/or staff to raise funds for the benefit of the school and students.
School-generated funds: School-generated funds are extra dollars schools take in over and above what the province provides in public funding. This revenue comes from a variety of sources, including fundraising. The Ministry of Education requires boards to annually report their total school-generated funds, which are comprised of:
* Field trips and excursions * Fundraising for external charities
* Student activities and resources, which includes fees
* Other, which includes fundraising, HST rebates, vending machines, milk, breakfast and lunch programs, pizza sales, and funding or grants from external sources
