Group brings up equity issues with individual public schools fundraising for teachers

Portland Public Schools will likely have fewer teachers next year, due to a drop in enrollment. That doesn’t necessarily mean layoffs, as some teachers will likely retire, and the district may choose not to fill some open positions. But parents at some schools are better prepared than others to influence the number of teachers available for their kids.

Every year, private school foundations bring in thousands of dollars to fund full-time teaching positions, but not every school has a foundation. A group called Reform PPS Funding wants to change that. The group says that even though local school foundations do have to give some of the funds they raise to the district-wide nonprofit, the system is still fundamentally inequitable because most of the money goes to schools with whiter, wealthier populations. We hear from Beth Cavanaugh, a member of the Reform PPS Funding group, and PPS Board Chair Michelle DePass.

Note: The following transcript was computer generated and edited by a volunteer.

Dave Miller:  Portland Public Schools will likely have fewer teachers next year due to a drop in enrollment.  But parents at some schools are better prepared than others to influence the number of people teaching their kids.  That’s because private school foundations bring in hundreds of thousands of dollars every year to fund full time teaching positions.  But not every school has a foundation.  A group called Reform PPS Funding wants to change this system.  They say that even though local school foundations do have to give some of the funds they raise to a districtwide non-profit ,the system is nevertheless fundamentally inequitable because most of the money goes to schools with whiter and wealthier populations.

Beth Cavanaugh is a member of the Reform PPS Funding group. She joins us along with Michelle DePass who is the Chair of the PPS Board.  Beth Cavanaugh, what exactly is the problem that you want to solve?

Beth Cavanaugh:  Our group came together with parents from a variety of schools across the district who had grown uncomfortable with what we were seeing in the distribution of fundraising dollars in PPS, particularly those dollars used to pay for staff and hiring additional teachers.  It was pretty clear that even though there was this distribution requirement, where schools had to contribute a portion of the funds they raised, the only schools who were really able to hire extra teachers through these fundraising dollars were the ones with concentrations of white students and low poverty populations.

And the grants that were being distributed, while innovative, were nowhere near the amount of dollars that were being kept by these high fundraising schools.  So our group really wanted to bring this to light because it felt like the conversation was around the grants and not so much around the other end of it - what is the distribution of the fundraising dollars looking like and where are those going and who’s being supported by that. So that’s the conversation we wanted to start having.

Miller:  We got a comment from Magali Rabasi a parent of a third grader at Rigler Elementary School who emailed us to say this, “The funds received through the parent fund, grants allocated by the fund for PPS are insufficient and only exacerbate the inequities between Rigler and our neighboring schools. Since 2015, Abernethy has been able to pay for more than 10 full time teachers with foundation funds while Rigler has never gotten enough funds to hire even one full time employee.”

Can you give us a sense for how much money some of these schools are raising and what that money is specifically going towards in specific schools?

Cavanaugh:  It was interesting that Abernathy was mentioned. That’s the school that my children attended for elementary school. And yeah, I was a parent that used to work on the auction and create art projects that we would auction off and raise as much money as possible and spend money at these parties. And it’s a great part of the community building atmosphere.  But also the amount that our school was raising to bring in additional staff was over $200,000 every single year.

Abernathy consistently would hire at least one additional full time staff member, usually more. Although in recent years, pandemic fundraising has taken a hit overall. But, the school next door to us, kind of a similar situation to what Magali is describing at Rigler These grants were, I think [on] average between $10,000 and $30,000 for elementary schools. And so, while we were able to lower the class sizes by hiring an additional classroom teacher, while we were able to increase the amount of time that we had a librarian on site, these are things that weren’t able to be addressed in schools that didn’t have this kind of fundraising capability.

Miller:  When you were a parent who was helping to raise this money, whether it was in auctions or other fundraising activities, how much of the inequities that you’re talking about and seeing now, how much were those on your mind?

Cavanaugh:  Well, it was a process. And it was not clear to me when I got started. I think this is something that, through some of our group’s work, talking to parents in a variety of different schools, we hear from a lot of parents in the schools that do a lot of this fundraising. The narrative is, first of all, we have to do this, we have to fundraise if we’re going to have what our kids need in our schools. And b, isn’t it great that a portion of what we raise goes to support lower income schools that don’t have the capacity to fundraise like we do. And so you don’t really think about it, it’s just sort of the way it is. And it wasn’t until I got involved in some more  volunteering and getting to know parents in other schools that were quite a different landscape than what I was seeing at Abernathy, that I realized we were even an outlier. Abernathy’s up at the top of the distribution of how much funds are raised. And It was very eye opening to be like, wait a minute, you don’t have four major fundraisers every year, you don’t have these extravagant auctions and you’re not doing these things. And, I started to see how much time and energy parents in our community were putting in, very well intentioned with wanting to support our public schools and have the best possible experience for our kids in public school. But all of this energy was going for and defending ourselves and we didn’t have a picture of what was happening in other schools. So that’s when I started to realize, oh, wait a minute, there’s an imbalance here and started to try to have those conversations within our school community.

Miller:  Michelle DePass, I want to turn to you as the chair of the Portland Public Schools Board. Do you agree that the current system that has been describing is inequitable?

Michelle DePass:  Absolutely. And as the chair of the school board, there’s 100 different ways that we can look at different inequities and different things to focus on. So I’ll admit that this fundraising has not been a strong focus.  But when I was campaigning for the school board, I happened to attend a fundraiser in which the ballroom next door was a school fundraiser in elementary school. It was Ainsworth.

So I peeked in on the Ainsworth fundraiser and it was really great. It had a DJ and it was really sparkly, people were dressed up and raising a ton of money. And the following weekend I went to my neighborhood school, which is Martin Luther King Elementary. The venue was a community beer hall and you know, you’ve got a couple of tickets for a free beer. I’m guessing they might have raised about $20,000 or less by auctioning off items that were generously donated by parents such as a dip in or out at a restaurant that a parent owned or a discount on a piece of furniture at a store, a parent owned.

But that was when I first became aware of the disparities and I haven’t really followed the issue as closely until recently when I’m starting to get heat maps and hearing about parent advocacy around this issue and I’m a parent also and parents do want to help and do want to fundraise and when we look at the data and we look at where the dollars are flowing, the outcomes are extremely inequitable And I think we can agree as Portlanders hers. And if the number of ‘Black Lives Matter’ signs in people’s yards are any indication of our values, you wouldn’t know it by following the dollars in this fundraising.

Miller:  I can imagine some of the things that the parents… Beth may have said before you had changed the way you view this. But the parents who are raising money for their kids’ schools right now, I can imagine what they would perhaps say. And Michelle DePass, maybe you can make a response to this first.  But I can imagine someone saying, ‘I’m not taking money away from somebody else’s school. I’m not precluding money from being spent anywhere. I’m just spending my own money so that the school near us, the kids there can get more in school opportunities.’ Michelle DePass what would you say to that parent?

DePass:  I’m a parent that wanted to help my kids’ various schools to the extent that I could as a single parent. And that’s the right thing to do. A parent’s desire to want to do the best for their kid is strong and there’s nothing wrong with that. I think what we look at as we look at a model that was developed, I believe in 2002 based on the formula, is that it results in inequities and it has to do with representation. I mean the people that are most impacted by inequities need to be at the table in order to solve some of the inequities. And that could be part of a structural problem. You say to that parent that we want to express our values through the flow of dollars to all of our school kids.

We have a persistent achievement gap - an opportunity gap that predates the pandemic. And if we really want to envision a district and a school turning out kids that have equal access to opportunities and much stronger and more robust educational outcomes specifically for kids of color, then we need to look at where the funds are going and how we’re spending and how we’re allocating our dollars.  We need to rethink it and we need to rethink it with impacted community members I hope [being] involved at schools such as Rigler, Martin Luther King and our schools that we know have higher levels of poverty.

Miller:  How much have you been talking with and including, in your activism, parents and groups at less white, less rich schools?

Cavanaugh:  Well our group has met with PTA’s at several schools including Rigler, the PTA  at Martin Luther King Elementary, Grout, and several Title I schools and schools that have received these grants as well as some that are more on the fundraising end. In May of 2021, we sent a letter to the board that was signed by parent leaders from 53 PTAs and foundations on both ends of the spectrum, asking for this policy to come to the table and reform to move forward. So we’ve got a mailing list with hundreds of names on it, again, from a variety of different school backgrounds. So it’s really important to us and the goal of this is engagement particularly with those previously silent voices. Because this conversation has been dominated by those who benefit most from the system so far.

One of the things we’ve learned, especially when we talked to the parents and schools that are not participating in this kind of fundraising is that it’s not part of the narrative at their school. They maybe don’t even know that they get a grant because the principals decide how those funds are spent. Sometimes they’re not even spent every year. But those principles might hold those grants over multiple years so that they can actually have enough money to do something meaningful with it. So parents aren’t really aware of the way those dollars are coming and going in the same way that parents in fundraising schools are because there’s a transparency issue there if you’re being asked to donate. These foundations are pretty clear that a third of your funds are going to this system. And part of the motivation to give is this sharing with the other schools. So there’s a lot less knowledge and transparency about the system in the schools that are not fundraising. So that’s been a really important part of the work that we’re doing. I did want to respond earlier that, you know, thinking about those parents that really want to see the immediate impact of their dollar by donating it to their school community. And this idea that it’s not taking away from other schools.

I think another goal that we have is really, how can we view our community as larger than our school doors. Portland is primarily a neighborhood resident enrollment system where most families attend the school closest to their home. Because of residential segregation. There’s pretty big disparities between those schools and that is reflected in the fundraising dollars. So how can we take that community past where we live in the schools in our neighborhoods so that we can use those resources to support kids across the district.

Miller:  I want to run by you the revision for this policy that the board’s policy committee has been working on. They’re going to be talking about this tomorrow. It would place, for the first time, limits on the number of staff that could be purchased. The range would be from half of a full time position to just under a full time one. There is no current limit on the number of staff that these private foundations can pay for. It would also increase the amount of the mandatory contribution to the district wide fund right now. It’s 33%. That would go to 40% or 50%. What do you think about this proposal?

DePass:  I am just familiarizing myself with the proposal, literally last night and this morning. And I think it’s a good start. What I still have questions about are how this plays out. What do outcomes look like when we increase this amount from 33% to 40%. I don’t know that. I haven’t even examined the unintended consequences of that move.

Miller:  What do you imagine they might be? I mean, for example, do you think that the total amount of money going to poorer schools could potentially decrease if parents at richer schools feel like they have less incentive to raise money?

DePass:  That is an argument that I’ve heard from some parents and staff that if we stop the fundraising, parents won’t have an incentive. I don’t know that to be true. Beth I agree with what you said about thinking beyond our school doors. We really have a systemwide problem, in terms of our achievement of black and brown students in the district, that whatever it takes. If this funding formula needs to change and that’s a driver of achievement, then yes. But I’d like to see more of what the unintended consequences are and how this increased percentage will play out in real time. And I don’t have a good sense of that.

One of the policy changes that is really great is that we’re asking for more transparency. So Beth, to your point about families and schools that don’t follow the dollars as closely, such as Martin Luther King, I’m guessing, and some of our higher poverty schools, this policy asks for a level of transparency that I think will get more parents involved.

Miller:  What have you heard from the leaders of these foundations are the major donors as you’ve been pushing for these changes?

Cavanaugh:  Well, I think the concern that you expressed about losing the funds for grants definitely comes to the forefront. It feels to me like a bit of a red herring because we’re talking about the amount that was distributed via those grants only being just over $500,000 [this year]. Whereas I feel like if those [funds] are really covering essential services in the schools that receive them with that $10,000 or $15,000 that they’re getting, then the district can set their priorities to cover those costs, if we’re concerned about losing them through fundraising. It’s not a stable source of funding and it’s clearly not an equitable one.

Then the other pieces, parents really support this sharing. They support sharing. We have taken the first steps in Portland to move beyond isolating all of the dollars in your individual school. And I think that after 25 years, it’s time to go beyond a step in the right direction and really make sure that this policy is serving all kids. And I think that we’ll find that parents will come along. Of course, there’s always going to be pushback and challenge within any kind of transition. But I think that the groundwork has been laid for Portland parents to want equitable outcomes in the way that they support their public schools

Miller:  Beth Cavanaugh and Michelle DePass, Thanks very much. Beth Cavanaugh is a member of the Reform PPS Funding group. Michelle DePass is the chair of the Portland Public School Board.

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