BOULDER — When Shirly White was in elementary school, the big fundraising push was for an end-of-year pizza party.
Now, as a Mesa Elementary Parent Teacher Organization member and third-grade parent, she’s helping her Boulder school raise about $100,000 to pay the salaries of tutors and aides providing academic support to students.
“It’s not pizza parties any more,” she said. “Those days are over. Now it’s about raising money the school needs to get the job done. In the case of Mesa, it’s to provide small-group, differentiated instruction.”
The school’s recent spring fling fundraiser raised about $25,000 through ticket sales and an auction supported by businesses. The money is earmarked for Chromebooks for students, a request from teachers.
The Parent Teacher Organization also raised about $60,000 in the fall through the school’s annual “direct ask” campaign — about $180 per student for the 320-student school.
Other small fundraisers include a school dance and community nights at local restaurants.
White said the school’s parents are committed to making up for ongoing shortfalls in state funding. And while they appreciate efforts to make changes at the state level, “our students are in school now.”
At the same time, she said, she worries that the reliance on parents to fill funding gaps is increasing inequality for other schools.
Even at Mesa, a Boulder school where the majority of parents would be considered affluent, there are parents who can’t afford to donate but feel like it’s an expectation.
Or, parents who don’t understand why a public school is asking for donations.
“It’s an education process on the state of school finance in Colorado,” she said.
“I see it as a crisis. We’re trying to protect our kids from whatever madness is happening at the state.”
There’s growing concern, locally and statewide, that the cumulative effect of state cuts to education funding is forcing schools to increasingly tap parents and community members — in turn deepening longstanding inequities for schools whose parents can’t afford to give.
In total, during the last school year, Boulder Valley elementary schools raised more than $1.7 million. Elementary fundraising brought in almost $1.6 million in 2013-14 and about $1.4 million in 2012-13.
How much money schools can raise and how much emphasis they place on fundraising varies widely across the Boulder Valley and St. Vrain Valley school districts.
But the gaps are widest in Boulder Valley.
Boulder’s Douglass Elementary, for example, reported raising about $150,000 last school year. Lafayette’s Pioneer Elementary reported about $6,000.
In the first semester of this school year, the five Boulder Valley elementary schools that raised the most money brought in about $444,200 combined. The five that raised the least brought in about $27,000 combined.
Fundraising is more complicated at the high school level, where there are fewer school-wide fundraisers and more fundraisers for specific activities, like marching band. But as at elementary schools, some middle and high schools can raise much more than others.
At Boulder’s New Vista High School, for example, the robotics team uses a cramped former boys locker room as a workspace and has access only to basic tools, going to other district high schools to borrow more specialized tools.
The team at the small, alternative high school also skipped a regional competition last school year because they couldn’t raise enough money.
Boulder Valley school board member Kathy Gebhardt, a lawyer who worked on several statewide school funding lawsuits and is the executive director of the nonprofit law firm Children’s Voices, said the overarching purpose of the state’s school funding system is to distribute funding equally.
“Fundraising, where it is now, disrupts that,” she said.
“It’s driven by the economics of the communities. It’s reached a heightened crisis because of the state’s refusal to address the issue of inadequate funding.”
She added that while Boulder Valley parent groups raise large amounts for their schools, they’re not coming close to making up the shortfall created by state funding cuts.
“Fundraising is playing on the margins,” she said. “We’re never going to be able to make up that shortfall. We’re just not.”
