Way Beyond Bake Sales: The $1 Million PTA

[WiccanLiberal]

"EACH fall, parents at the Anderson School, a highly regarded K-8 on the Upper West Side for gifted and talented students, receive letters from the PTA emblazoned with the school’s elegant “A” logo. Though Anderson indulges in the usual trappings of public-school fund-raising — bake sales, book fairs, auctions — this letter is blunter: It urges parents to simply write a check. And it suggests an amount: This school year, it was $1,300....At a time when the city’s schools have had their financing cut by an average of 13.7 percent over the past five years, the money has buffered these schools from the hard choices many others have had to make. In a system where many parents’ associations raise no money at all, these schools have earned a special name among parents and school consultants: “public privates.”...And in a system where money and race are inextricably intertwined, most of these schools serve populations with a far greater percentage of white students than the system over all, where about 15 percent of the students are white. P. S. 6, for example, is 70 percent white, as is P.S. 234, a school in TriBeCa that also raises hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. The city’s Education Department does not track how much individual PTAs raise. There is no central clearinghouse for this information, and parents are often reluctant to publicly share fund-raising numbers. To put together a list of the top-earning PTAs, The New York Times analyzed Internal Revenue Service filings posted on GuideStar, a research company that tracks nonprofit organizations and charitable giving. The information is not comprehensive, so there may be other schools that raised similar amounts that were not included. But it presents a snapshot of how some of the richest schools have fared.

“These rich schools are semiprivate,” said Troy Torrison, 47, a creative director who has a third grader at P. S. 234, which raised $541,712 in the 2009-10 school year. The Taste of TriBeCa, a culinary festival with many of the neighborhood’s best-known chefs participating, provided a substantial amount. “These other schools are public, public with no extras,” he said.


http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/03/nyregion/at-wealthy-schools-ptas-help-fill-budget-holes.html


I'm just posting this without comment, curious what others will think...

[fj1200]

^They should be ostracized for supporting their kids school?

[Trigg]

I really don't have a problem with this.

The parents aren't forced to contribute they are asked to.

These are public schools serving the communities they are in, so of course some schools are going to be in wealthier areas than others. If the parents are able to off set the cut backs with donations than good for them. At least they haven't pulled their kids and put them in private schools.

I don't know anything about the fees associated with NY schools. Here I have to pay for books for each of my kids, usually about 200-300 for each of them. In Florida there is no charge for books. If these parents aren't paying a book fee than 1300.00 is a fair donation to make. IMHO.

[logroller]

That's incredible. I changed districts three years ago and the PTA at the new school raises way more; race isn't an issue though IMHO. The last district we were in had roughly the same, though socioeconomics are way different. It's frustrating for us because my wife still works as a teacher for that other district; she gives as a teacher there, so we have less to give to our kids' school' PTAs as parents. I can tell you though, testing results haven't changed for our kids; because we were just as involved in our kids learning Process before--that's the key. Not race, not money, but involvement. Clearly someone who gives to the PTA is more likely than not to take an active role.