Portland Public Schools board approves fundraising change amid split community support

The Portland Public Schools governing board Tuesday night voted to change the way school fundraising will pay for staff in the district.

As it stands now, local school foundations — commonly referred to as LSFs — can raise funds to pay employees for their individual schools. According to the district, there are 31 such foundations across its 80-plus campuses. Some raise more than others, and some don’t pay for staffing. Most of the largest fundraisers are at the elementary level.

The individual schools keep about two-thirds of the money their foundations raise for staff, with the remainder doled out to other schools based on income levels via the district’s Parent Fund Awards.

There are some schools that don’t have foundations and don’t qualify for the awards.

Local foundations contributed $2.5 million to Portland schools in the 2022-23 academic year, according to a staff report filed to the board. Roughly $1.75 million of the total was allocated to individual foundations that fundraised and $729,000 went to the awards fund.

District officials said this money paid for nearly 32 full-time equivalent positions at schools with foundations and about nine at schools receiving the grants. This is out of some 8,000 total employees in the state’s largest school district.

The money has been used for different kinds of staffing. Some schools have used it to hire more educational assistants or pay the school secretary’s salary, for example. Others have used the money to turn part-time positions paid by the district into full-time, for instance, or to buy more hours for physical education or art teachers.

Portland is unique in how it handles such fundraising efforts, but the district has done it this way for years. Before Tuesday, the policy hadn’t been revised for about two decades.

The school board approved the policy revision on a 5-2 vote, with members Andrew Scott and Patte Sullivan voting against it. Student representative Frankie Silverstein voiced her support.

What is the new policy?

Under the revised policy, a districtwide foundation will be created and take over allocations. Instead of being done school by school, there will be a central model used by all.

The change only affects money used to pay for staff. All other non-staff fundraising, like booster clubs and PTAs, will stay the same.

Staff money donations will be collected only by the designated foundation and put into a single, combined account. Donations will still be accepted from school foundations, nonprofits, corporations, businesses and individuals.

A Parent Advisory Committee — via the nonprofit Fund for PPS, established in 2019 — will create a new formula to determine how money is distributed. The formula is expected to be informed by school administrators and approved by the school board in advance.

Proponents said this group is also meant to serve as an advocacy branch for more state and federal funding for Oregon public schools. The Fund for PPS would be a convener and support advocacy at all levels, within its nonprofit rules.

The policy revision also requires annual reporting to the board regarding donations, expenditures and major projects, which proponents argue builds in needed transparency.

Additionally, it states entities that fundraise for individual schools have to provide a way for all benefitting community members to participate. For example, they can’t have a fundraising event requiring an especially costly entry price. The policy also says individual schools can’t have per-family or per-student fundraising targets.

The changes will take effect July 1. However, there is a caveat baked in regarding donations collected by local school foundations for staff over the last year. These carryover funds will still be used the way donors intended in the upcoming school year as part of a yearlong transition buffer.

How do people feel about it?

Hundreds — including many employees, parents and students — voiced their support for the reform leading up to Tuesday night’s meeting. At the same time, hundreds of others — largely parents — voiced opposition. Joint letters from each side have cited more than 1,000 signatories each.

Proponents argue the district’s current system has long needed a change and does not serve school communities most in need of that money — particularly schools that serve more low-income neighborhoods and whose families might not have the time or money to fundraise the way more affluent communities can. They stressed that the way things are done now doesn’t align with the idea of free, public schools.

Opponents argued the change will result in fewer donations overall, upset families leaving the district, and negative ramifications for their children, such as fewer offerings and lower academic outcomes.

Tuesday night’s conversation took place in a year when PPS community tensions have been especially high, following the district’s first-ever teachers strike in the fall, severe storm damage in the winter, and now, a $30 million budget deficit facing next school year.

Related: Q&A: Portland Public Schools considers a nearly $2.4 billion budget proposal for next year

The Portland Association of Teachers supported the fundraising policy change.

“In order for PPS to have a truly equitable school system, we must have fully funded schools that give every student an equal opportunity to succeed,” the union wrote in its statement of support. “Moreover, a necessary staff position should never be dependent on a community’s ability to fundraise for that educator’s salary.”

A group of community members known as Reform PPS Funding did an analysis of the public comments submitted over the last month. The results showed similar numbers of people for and against a districtwide foundation, but they noted a “much broader base” for those in support.

All the comments opposing reform came from people in foundation-supported schools, according to the analysis. Meanwhile, comments in support of the change come from people in both foundation and non-foundation schools across the district.

One parent who submitted written testimony in opposition to the change said they prefer their limited donations directly benefit their children’s school. The same parent also argued it doesn’t build trust for the district to pursue such a change in a year when the community has faced so many additional hurdles.

Others argued the policy is shortsighted and will hurt the district overall.

“PPS board members in favor of this policy change seem to think that eliminating LSFs will cause so-called ‘rich’ parents to fight harder to secure funds for all PPS students, both through fundraising and political advocacy,” wrote one elementary school parent.

“However, the likelier outcome is that these parents will choose to simply leave PPS for private schools who will welcome them with open arms.”

Board members shared similar thoughts. Those in favor argued this move was years in the making and a needed change to match the district’s equity goals and values.

Dissenting members Scott and Sullivan argued there were too many unanswered questions, especially around how the district will make up the money currently raised by the school groups and what the allocation formula will be. They echoed sentiments that the process was incomplete and rushed.

Board member Julia Brim-Edwards was the main champion of the policy and is the current chair of the policy committee. She pushed back on criticism of the process during her comments Tuesday.

The district’s current fundraising process is based on the Parent Groups and the Schools policy, which was last revised in 2002. The formal school board conversation on whether and how to revamp the fundraising policy began back in 2019.

Brim-Edwards told OPB the criticism that this was “sprung” on the community has largely come from people involved with a small number of schools that currently benefit the most — whose foundations raise and keep the most money and who have some of the lowest numbers of students qualifying for free and reduced-price meals.

“In the last decade, policies related to individual school fundraising to pay for staff have likely had more opportunities for public discussion than any other singular policy topic before the PPS school board,” Brim-Edwards wrote this week in a private North and Northeast Portland Facebook group, listing 29 meeting examples since 2019.

From her examples, several board meetings allowed for discussion and public comment on the subject, and a handful of student conversations and community roundtables have been held at different locations throughout the city, especially in 2021 and 2022.

The conversation continued in 2023, including communication in September from the district’s policy committee to all active foundation leaders, sharing the policy process and inviting them to come forward with alternate proposals.

Brim-Edwards, who took the role as policy committee chair this past summer for her third time, said the committee did not meet for six weeks in the fall given the teachers union negotiations, strike and settlement.

But Brim-Edwards said there have been conversations happening in the community about reforming the policy since long before the board took an interest in 2019.

She recalled when she served on the school board from 2001-05, about a decade after Oregon voters passed Measure 5 in 1990. Measure 5 created a new limit on what portion of local property taxes could be spent on schools. In response to the restrictions, local school foundations were created in Portland in 1994.

Related: Oregon school funding is complicated. We try to break it down

Brim-Edwards told OPB that Portland Public Schools is the only medium or large district in the state that allows fundraising to buy staff at particular schools. The board’s data and research didn’t check small and rural school districts.

“Other districts that allow parents to fundraise to pay for staff positions require the fundraising happen through a central foundation,” she said. “PPS is a complete outlier.”

Read the approved foundations policy, staff reports and submitted testimony in the board documents here. Watch the board meeting here.