Here’s a piece from the Village Voice about the gross inequities in education and arts education associated with the varying abilities of parents to raise funds for their child’s public school.
When school systems and state departments of education fail to establish instructional standards that include required levels of minimum instruction and/or fail to enforce such required minimums, what you get is a system completely out of whack.
Here’s a link to the article: Rich School; Poor School, by Kate Pastor.
“We don’t have silent auctions and all those things. That’s just not
our population,” González says.It’s a very different story at the William
Penn School (P.S.321), located in pricey Park
Slope, Brooklyn. Its Parent-Teacher
Association brings in approximately $500,000 in annual revenue,
according to PTA Co-President Jill Mont. Its biggest fundraisers, a
spring dance and an auction, collected between $75,000 and $80,000
apiece last year, and an annual appeal rakes in about $100,000–combining
for about 60 times M.S.223’s annual PA budget.
Here’s the invitation to PS321’s upcoming benefit. A terrific school, a terrific principal, a terrific program, terrific teachers, and a terrific parent organization. If only every school could do this.
Or, if only 321 and schools li8ke it could “mentor” other schools on what they do and how they do it…which might help a little, but basically it’s all about demographics and resources, and we all know that location, location, location rules the day…
Still, I’d like to see the parents organizations mobilize and come together to see if there are strategies that will help every school in our city
Jane