We’ve talked about “this” before. The “this” is how traditional school districts spend taxpayer dollars without most of that money being spent directly to make young learners smarter and stronger. Sure, most of that money is spent on hiring teachers, administrators, and other staff to teach and take care of the student body. But when it comes to money directly supporting the needs of the individual learner, schools come up short. In fact, instead of using money to support young learners becoming smarter and stronger, many traditional schools use the young learners to make money for the school. It’s called fundraising and most K-12 campuses practice it and use students as their salespeople.
Planet Money online recently did a story on school fundraisers and how schools turn their student body into a de facto “sales force.” The story goes like this,
“Maria Lares is arguably the heart and soul of Villacorta Elementary School in La Puente, California. She’s been teaching at the school for more than 30 years and has been on the Parent-Teacher Association there the entire time.”
“’The PTA actually means a lot to me,’ she says. ‘I’m an immigrant, and when I got here my parents – they worked 12 hours a day. So they never attended any school things. So as a teacher I said, ‘Uh-huh, PTA’s my baby!’ And it has been for all these years.”
“The way Maria sees it, the main job of the school’s PTA is to fund the activities that make school fun for kids – e.g., pizza parties for the honor roll students, bringing in a big reptile show for the kids, or helping pay for the 6th graders to go to science camp for a week.”
“This year, Maria’s number one priority is for the PTA to raise enough money to send every single kid at the school on at least one field trip.”
“It’s been three years since the whole school went on one. The school didn’t fundraise in time last year, and they didn’t go on field trips the previous two years because of COVID-19. So this year, Maria is determined to make field trips happen. And she’s looking forward to one field trip in particular for her first graders.”
“’I like to take my class to the beach. On a boat ride,’ she said. ‘They’ll tell you, ‘I’ve never been to the beach!’ They have never been on boats before.’”
“The beach is just 40 minutes away, but 90% of students at this school are economically disadvantaged and 20% are unhoused, so many of her students have never seen the ocean.”
“To pay for a trip to the beach and all the other field trips, the PTA at Villacorta Elementary raises money through their own fundraisers, like nacho sales and t-shirt sales. But those don’t generate huge amounts of money, so once or twice a year, they’ll go through a school fundraising company. Those companies put on these flashy assemblies where they show students all the prizes they could win if they sell enough chocolate, or popcorn, or wrapping paper.”
“Now offsetting the costs of field trips with fundraising happens at pretty much every school. Wealthy schools also fundraise to help cover the cost of their more expensive trips.”
“But why is this the system? Why do schools let companies come in to turn kids into little salespeople?”
“Public schools get their official budgets from local property taxes, as well as states and the federal funding. Technically, schools get more money per student today than they have historically gotten.”
“For Villacorta Elementary, the districts gets around $4.5 million a year. It’s about $16,000 per student at this school, which is a little more than the national average of $14,347, according to 2021 Census Data. But it’s not like the principal gets all of that money to spend. The district actually spends almost all of it on things like salaries for teachers and benefits and the cost of running the building. What the principal gets to spend is closer to $1,200 per kid. And because it’s public funds, there are a lot of rules about how he can spend this money.”
“’It’s sort of a give and take,’ says the principal George Herrera. ‘If I put the money] to field trips, then I shortchange somewhere.’”
“But when the PTA raises money from fundraisers like selling cheesecakes or chocolate, that is not part of the official school budget. It is not ‘public funds.’ So this money can go to anything. Which is very valuable to a school.”
“Marguerite Roza, a school funding expert at Georgetown University’s McCourt School of Public Policy, said it would be possible to just change the rules about how school money can be spent. And, she said, if a school really wanted to prioritize field trips in their official budget, they could. No fundraising from the PTA necessary.”
“Because, of the $1,200 the principal gets per student, around $500 could be spent on field trips. That would be enough money to send everyone at the whole school on approximately 17 field trips a year. But that is not what this principal does.”
“George chooses to spend his budget on a teacher’s aide for his students that are learning English and an attendance clerk to try to deal with the school’s attendance problem. The clerk calls parents when a student is absent to ask why their child is missing school.”
“’For me, my decision is very academic-based. You know, what intervention do we need? Do we need to hire an intervention teacher? Do we need to provide after-school tutoring?’”
“And choosing to prioritize his budget this way might be tactical.”
“Marguerite Roza, the school funding expert, says it is a lot easier to ask parents and the community to pitch in for something like field trips than it is to go around asking parents to donate money to pay for the salary of an attendance clerk. The PTA could fundraise for that instead. But schools all over the U.S. choose to fundraise for the fun school perks instead because it works. People like to give money for this kind of cause.”
“But that means the fundraisers never stop.”
“Every year the PTA at Villacorta has a goal to raise $20,000. To get there, they held about 10 fundraisers: a popcorn fundraiser, a Mother’s Day shop, a jogathon but with bubbles called a ‘bubble run.’ For one fundraiser, the teachers worked at McDonald’s for a day. (The teachers made the fries, and the principal served cookies.)”
“When the school uses a fundraising company, the company takes a cut of everything students sell. In Villacorta’s experience, the company usually gets 60% and the school gets 40%, which is not the best deal. But the companies help the school bring in more money per fundraiser.”
So what if a kid requires a different learning intervention? Or what if one kid has been to the beach, but would like to go to the science museum instead?
What if $16,000 could be spent building an individualized learning plan for each kid, complete with adult learning leader support, personalized interventions, and field trips or other learning experiences customized for each young learner?
A big problem with our traditional school system these days is that we have a small number of adults making the same decision for lots of kids. And today, it doesn’t have to be that way.
We have the ability to personalize each learning experience and have the money follow and support that experience.
Friday News Roundup tomorrow. SVB
A Better Path to Learning 
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