Should public schools that raise money be forced to share the wealth?

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After the 10-for-one sales on school supplies, long before the Valley nights turn from hot and still to cold and windy, the school fundraising season officially begins. Up for sale: magazine subscriptions, pre-formed balls of cookie dough, chocolates and nuts, wrapping paper, substantial and glittering for the upcoming holiday season. Next up: walkathons, jumpathons, spellathons, garden tours and auctions, some events netting tens of thousands of dollars for public schools with donations coming from parents, grandparents and businesses.

This is the reality of California public education in the 21st century in a state that ranks below Louisiana in per-pupil school spending, where everything from the latest classroom technology to a vegetable garden and greenhouse is available – but only to public school kids with the cash to support them.

More than $250 million in donations flowed into California public schools in 2009 from fundraisers put on by nonprofit school foundations, according to the California Consortium of School Foundations. Thousands more come from parent teacher associations at individual schools. A few years ago, those dollars were likely to pay for "extras" like high-tech projectors, digital cameras and school garden sheds. Today, after California has cut $20 billion from educational spending in the past three years, schools are increasingly reliant on fundraisers and PTA dollars for teacher supplies, band programs and field trips.

"PTA money isn't 'fluff' money for us," said Andrea Egan, principal at Phoebe Hearst Elementary School in Sacramento. "We rely heavily on our parent support for anything extra – field trips, classroom supplies, our garden program."

Given the value parents place on their children's education, the trend toward backfilling public school coffers with private money is not surprising. But for some educators, the trend is alarming given the economic disparity that demographics play in school enrollment.

Schools serving poor families are less likely to have an audience for fundraisers or parents with free time to put them on. That means fewer discretionary dollars to support art and band – fewer chances to replace programs and positions the state cut. But there's a double whammy: Poor kids who need fees, uniforms and calculators don't have parents who can provide them and are more likely to attend a school too broke to cover those costs.

"To me, it speaks to an erosion of the principle that public schools are going to be funded through a common public fund, that no matter what town you are in, you are going to have the same chance to be successful," says John Rogers, director of UCLA's Institute for Democracy, Education and Access, which released a 2011 study of state high school principals. Among the report's findings: High schools with few students from low-income families raise $20 for every $1 raised by high-poverty schools.

That paradigm did not sit well in Albany, a city of 18,500 bordering Berkeley in the East Bay. This year, after six months of frank – and sometimes painful – soul searching, the Albany Unified School District board began requiring money raised at any one of Albany's three elementary schools to be shared equally.

"All we are talking about is providing equity for our students within the confines of the school day," says Marla Stephenson, superintendent of the Albany Unified School District.

Albany is not the only place where the question of equitable fundraising has come up. Since 1994, school-site fundraising groups in Portland, Ore., that raise money for staffing have to contribute a third of what they make to an equity fund, with $8 million going to the city's neediest schools.

The Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District has since 2004 required 15 percent of all private donations raised at individual schools go into an equity fund administered by the Santa Monica-Malibu Education Foundation. That money is then redistributed on a per-student basis, taking into account the total dollars spent on each student in the district from all other state and federal sources.

Should public schools that raise money be forced to share the wealth? In many communities, including local ones, the concept is a tough sell – one that many people aren't willing to consider.

"We are not in the business of taking money that is raised by school sites, like from a PTA or any kind of group or school committee," says Gabe Ross, chief communications officer for Sacramento City Unified Schools.

Evelyn Hahn, a parent at Pioneer Elementary School in Davis who has chaired the school's biggest fundraiser for the past five years, said the idea of turning over some of that school's auction receipts didn't go over well when the idea came up at a parent meeting. "I thought it was a good idea – but people said, 'No. We work our tail off for that money.' " Instead, Pioneer shares volunteers on a reciprocal basis with other Davis schools working on auction fundraisers.

Charlie Watters, the principal of Kit Carson Middle School in Sacramento, says, "I think it would be very difficult to ask parents at a school to do significant efforts on behalf of a school their child doesn't attend."

At Kit Carson, where 80 percent of students qualify for free or reduced school lunch, Watters doesn't expect parents to come through with extra dollars. He knows they can't generate for Kit Carson what Phoebe Hearst parents a few blocks away can raise for their school. "It's not for lack of willingness – we have very committed, dedicated parents," Watters says. "They just don't have the resources to help us in ways another school might."

Watters says some of what Kit Carson isn't able to raise privately is made up for by federal money poor schools receive that richer schools do not. Some of these categorical grants rigidly restrict how dollars can be used. Other grants are more expansive. A library improvement grant can be used, say, for field trips or assemblies – but not for a band program, so Kit Carson has none.

Albany school board Vice President Paul Black said those kinds of funding inequities were unacceptable in his tiny school district, where parents from one elementary school were likely to bump into parents from a sister school at the grocery store.

"Nobody wants their neighbor's child to not get a good education," Black says.

The instinct to dig deep and backfill on behalf of the next generation is primordial to many adults – certainly to most parents. We start the school year writing checks for our own children's lab fees, sports uniforms and school supplies. If we have money left over, we'll write another check to support our student's school or PTA. Supporting another student's school seems a stretch of both finances and compassion.

But every California student will ultimately take their place alongside our own children as adults in a state that guaranteed every child a quality education – and shortchanged some for want of a few magazine subscriptions.

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Jill Duman is a journalist, parent and part-time playground attendant who lives in Davis.

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