The Bend-La Pine school board last week voted to allow community members to begin raising funds for an artificial turf field at Summit High School, so phones may start ringing with fundraisers looking for a few bucks.

An evergreen field at Summit will be a big-ticket item, but schools all over the district are regularly raising money for small-ticket items as well.

For many schools, the money is critical. At Pine Ridge Elementary, Principal Kevin Gehrig said that the PTA does one large-scale fundraiser each year in which students sell magazines through Reader’s Digest.

“It provides me with the money to do things we can’t do out of our normal budget,” Gehrig said.

This year, the PTA provided each classroom with $150 for supplies, as well as $2,500 for technology, $3,000 for an artist-in-residence and another $2,000 that Gehrig plans to spend on assemblies or an author visit.

While the school board continues to iron out policies regarding big-ticket donations like the turf field, the district has had fundraising regulations in place for years. The administration and the board have long worked to ensure that schools remain equitable and that the fundraising, which most principals agree is necessary for a well-rounded education, doesn’t put too much of a burden on students and families. The district allows principals to handle fundraising as they see fit, which means that different schools do all sorts of things to get the extra cash.

Plenty of policies

Ron Wilkinson, the deputy superintendent, said the school board reviewed and altered some fundraising regulations in the late 1990s.

“The board really expressed some concerns about it. Some families were complaining or expressed concern about excessive fundraising,” he said, noting that excessive means different things to everyone. “We wanted some coordination or at least limitations to excessive fundraising.”

The school district does not allow door-to-door fundraising, and principals are supposed to inform the superintendent of all the fundraising activities taking place at the school. Community groups doing fundraising are not required to get permission from the principal but are encouraged to include the school in their plans.

In 2001, the district commissioned a study to look at commercialism and fundraising in the district. In January 2004, Superintendent Doug Nelson and his team submitted the report to the board.

The report stated in part that fundraising activities were almost twice as common at elementary and middle schools. It also noted that schools, particularly high schools, have a variety of parent groups that support them and that those groups were unmonitored by the district. And the report found that while the school board’s policy prohibited “excessive fundraising,” that was hard to define.

“Defining excessive seems to be a moving target when the demands for fundraising comes from the students and parents themselves,” it stated.

The committee that wrote the report recommended in part that the school district improve the tracking and budgeting process for money collected in fundraising activities, as well as develop a process that helps principals determine whether fundraising at schools is excessive.

Bend-La Pine also has a policy regarding using private funds to hire staff.

“We were getting requests to be able to raise funds for additional staff, particularly during what I call those dark years (of budget cuts),” Wilkinson said.

The policy requires that all of those funds go through the Education Foundation for the Bend-La Pine Schools, which then funnels two-thirds of the money to the originating school and the other third of the funds to other schools for the same purpose.

The Summit Initiative to Reduce Class Size conforms to this policy and is in full swing again this year, working to raise money to hire teachers with a raffle next week. The group raised enough money to fund a full-time teacher at the high school in both 2005 and 2006, and last year gave $13,000 to the foundation for other schools.

Keeping it fair

While raising money for teachers requires that groups share the wealth, other fundraising stays within its own school, which can raise equity issues.

“There is no question that’s the toughest question,” Wilkinson said. “With fundraising in this district, there are schools that have the capabililty of raising more funds than others, and we talk about it every year.”

Wilkinson said the school district’s goal is to have every school at the same level with a base of technology and other teaching tools. Beyond that level, Wilkinson said, the district recognizes that there may be things provided to certain schools because of fundraising or federal dollars for low-income classrooms and students.

“There is no perfect formula to absolute equity,” he said. “It’s really been approached as ‘what is it that we believe is standard, that we want available to all students, that as a district we are obligated to ensure as standard?’ And then we realize there may be supplemental things, either in low-income schools by federal dollars, or in affluent areas by fundraising.”

But most parents who donate money to a school expect to see those dollars at work in their children’s school.

“I can understand the parents’ point of view that you’re raising money for your school, and you want to see that money go to that school,” Pilot Butte Principal Stephanie Bennett said. “I think it’s fair. I think if you want to create great programs, you will work hard to get that money.”

And the money sure helps.

“I know it’s hard on some families,” Gehrig said. “We try to keep it as light as possible. But (the fundraising) helps quite a bit.”

With four students in the Bend-La Pine Schools, Kim Snider knows a thing or two about school fundraising.

“I’d rather write one big check,” she said. “The kids get disappointed that I won’t let them go out (door-to-door), and you feel like you’re always hitting the same family members.”

Snider said she supports having to pay for her kids to play sports, because it takes the burden away from the district. But she said she isn’t sure about whether fundraising should stay within a single school.

“The west side has more parents with money, so it’s probably harder for other schools,” she said. Snider doesn’t agree with the school district’s decision to allow fundraising for a turf field at Summit, where her son is a football player.

“It feels elite. Everybody already says ours is the school with all the money, and I don’t like having that stigma.”

How to raise the money

Most schools organize their fundraising initiatives through parent-teacher associations. Schools also receive grants from the Education Foundation for the Bend-La Pine Schools, which this year gave out more than $36,000 for initiatives at various schools. Last year, the foundation received more than $100,000 in grant requests. Foundation President Lisa Zimmerman said that the beauty of the foundation is that it can pick and choose how to hand out the money.

“We look at the immediate need in the school, and if we have a school that doesn’t have enough computers in the computer lab, that may take precedence,” she said. “We can be more selective.”

One popular fundraiser at local elementary schools is selling gift wrap and holiday gifts through a catalog service called Sally Foster. High Lakes and Buckingham elementaries both used the program this year. Teresa Hjeresen, the principal at Buckingham, said that the program generated about $20,000 for the school.

How schools fundraise and for what purpose varies. At Pilot Butte Middle School, students just raised about $10,000 by selling cookie dough. At Marshall High School, the senior class is fundraising for a class trip to Disneyland after graduation. The school doesn’t do any sales events or schoolwide activities.

And at the middle school and high school levels, students may be raising money for more than one program at a time. For example, while Pilot Butte does two schoolwide fundraisers during the school year, the band also fundraises for instruments, and various other school activities do fundraising as well.

A new technique

Most elementary and middle schools organize their fundraising primarily through parent groups. But while many schools continue to use sales as a form of fundraising, some are trying to move away from the technique.

At Lava Ridge, the PTA is running a direct donation drive where parents join the PTA for a minimum of $10. “(Their hope is) that it will cover everything,” Principal Gary Timms said. “If they raise enough, then we won’t do any other fundraising.”

It’s a bit different at Amity Creek Magnet School, which doesn’t have a PTA. Still, that doesn’t keep the school from raising approximately $22,000 each year through fundraising.

“We just bring to the table ideas that fit the school mission,” Principal Carol Hammett said. “We don’t do anything door to door.”

Instead, the school runs an auction each winter featuring items provided by parents, from ski vacations to knit hats. The auction raises about $12,000 each year. The school follows it up with a bowl-a-thon and a harvest festival, and also holds a weekly coffee hour sponsored by Strictly Organic Coffee. Parents from the culinary program at Central Oregon Community College provide pastries, and the money raised funds the school’s fine-arts program.

Some schools are fortunate enough to be the charity of choice for local community groups. Three Rivers School in Sunriver is the recipient of donations from the Rotary Club, the Sunriver Women’s Club, the Sunriver Music Festival and the Three Rivers Care for Kids Foundation, among others. The groups have provided an artist-in-residence program, donations to the drama program, athletic scholarships and musician visits.

“There’s a push to try not to use children,” Principal Gayle Vidal said. “Since I’ve been here, we’ve been working with teachers and parents, and there’s an increasing feeling that we don’t want fundraisers. We want something that’s bringing families and children together.”

Three Rivers School PTA President Joan Ogden doesn’t want kids out selling products on the street either. Instead, the school held a walk-a-thon and earned more than $10,000.

“It’s a big priority for me to eliminate any sort of sales,” Ogden said. “I don’t agree with asking people to spend money on low-quality things.”

The school is still contracted with Sally Foster to sell holiday gift wrap, but Ogden decided this year the school will simply pass out the catalogs to parents.

“I think if we as parents decide we want to do extra things for the school, then it should be coming from parents, and we should be keeping kids out of the whole commercialism loop … especially in these economic times and in a high-poverty area, we shouldn’t be sending catalogs home with a bunch of crap in them, when some parents don’t even have money to buy snowshoes.”