By Sonya Fox and Bruse Ira Sultan Santa Monica
(This letter was originally addressed to the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District Board of Education). Editor: We would like to add our voices to those of the many Santa Monica and Malibu citizens who have expressed support for Superintendent John Deasy’s proposal to place 15 percent of gifts to individual schools in an equity fund to help schools throughout the Santa Monica Malibu Unified School District.
We have long been concerned about the inequality of private fundraising within the district because it exacerbates the already substantial opportunity and achievement gaps among children in our schools. To address this problem, we became actively involved in the Santa Monica-Malibu Education Foundation, which helps schools throughout the district. Then, in 1993, when our youngest child was a student at Franklin Elementary School, we initiated a scrip sales fundraiser in which profits earned at Franklin were divided 50-50; 50 percent to the Franklin PTA and 50 percent to the foundation. Former Superintendent Neil Schmidt indicated that if our pilot program succeeded, he would ask the School Board to require some sort of gift revenue sharing at all schools. A group of very dedicated Franklin parents helped turn our fundraiser into a major source of revenue, raising approximately $90,000 over a two-year period — $45,000 for Franklin and $45,000 for the foundation.
The Franklin parents who worked in and contributed to the program considered it a privilege, not a tax, even though only half the funds raised were spent at our own children’s school. We also believed that our own children benefited from the model of caring and sharing set by their parents. However, due to pressure from those at other schools, the proposal to require district-wide sharing of privately raised funds was quietly dropped.
Since that time, the fundraising gap between more affluent and less affluent schools has widened. For example, we recently read that this year Point Dume Elementary School in Malibu raised eight times more per pupil than John Muir Elementary School in Santa Monica. As state funding cuts and budget shortfalls force the district to make once unimaginable cuts in school programming, the discrepancy between the educational offerings in different neighborhoods will become even more apparent unless the issue of fundraising inequality is addressed without further delay.
Our hope is that under the vibrant leadership of Deasy and the current school board, the equity concerns which were previously tabled will now be firmly addressed. We strongly believe that Deasy’s gift proposal is an important step in the effort to bridge the opportunity and achievement divides within our local public schools. We urge the school board to adopt the proposed gift policy at the earliest possible opportunity.
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on January 24, 2004. Read the original PDF.