Another school fundraiser" Rethinking funding for education
When my eldest daughter began kindergarten five years ago at our excellent school in downtown Toronto, fundraising demands were a constant onslaught. There were pizza days, magazine and cookie dough sales, bake sales, a dance-a-thon and a silent auction. There were fundraisers to fund the fundraisers. School fundraising became my favourite thing to rail against?for putting demands on families and for undermining the principles of public education?but when I finally got around to joining our school?s parent council, I realized that matters were much more complicated than they seemed.
What had seemed to me like a barrage of fundraising requests was actually a series of initiatives carefully selected to fund (on a shoestring) many specific programs. Scrap the magazine sale and say goodbye to new classroom literacy materials. The dance-a-thon came about one year when the board had no funding for new computers. This year, an enterprising parent organized the sale of school-branded hoodies to finance the replacement of decades-old gym mats. These campaigns?and the parent volunteers who run them?are filling a massive gap in education funding, and teachers and students have come to count on them. (These campaigns?and the parent volunteers who run them?are also part of the reason why I consider our school ?excellent.?)
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