Audio clip
Jean Lowrey
As public schools grapple with rising costs and tight budgets, local education foundations are mobilizing money and volunteers for programs that can fall by the wayside amid uncertain economic times.
“We’re all really under the gun right now,” said Tom Cloud, vice chairman of the Cleveland, Tenn., School Board. “The money is not just laying there in a bank somewhere. When gas goes up, that affects (us).”
As budgets are stretched to pay for essentials, foundations often fund “extras” to enhance teaching. The Bradley/Cleveland Public Education Foundation has had a 25 percent increase in applications this year for “minigrants.”
“I would attribute that to the economic uncertainties,” said the foundation’s executive director, Walter Presswood.
Schools aren’t immune from the economy. Not only are food and gas costs rising, but sales tax revenues aren’t meeting expectations. A Dalton, Ga., education sales tax has fallen roughly $100,000 short of monthly expectations recently, school officials said.
“That happens in any economic downturn,” school board member Rick Fromm said.
Even when the economy isn’t flagging, area educators say foundations help with a perennial problem: teachers buying their own supplies for special projects.
Mr. Cloud began teaching fifth grade in 1988. On his first day, he said, the principal presented him with a handful of rubber bands and a box of paper clips — his supplies for the entire year.
Now, with help from education foundations teachers like Shanda Hickman, of Eastbrook Middle School in Dalton, have money for new programs requiring new materials.
Ms. Hickman’s eighth-graders have created “Kids for Kids Curriculum Press,” a group of students that creates educational games that are used in other classes, Ms. Hickman said. The program is funded by the Whitfield County Education Foundation.
“It frees up some teacher time,” she said, “and allows for more engaging class material.”
Still, Jean Lowrey, executive director of the Dalton Education Foundation says that education foundations exist primarily to develop community support for schools — not to purchase materials.
“There is a misperception that education foundations are a treasure chest for public schools,” she said. “We are not extra coffers for the schools.”
Dalton’s foundation provides scholarships for students and grants for schools. But, the foundation’s members bring community involvement with public schools.
Local business leaders recently volunteered at Dalton High School, setting up a pretend economy to teach personal finance skills to students.
“I think as school budgets tighten we get more creative,” Ms. Lowrey said.
The first education foundations cropped up in the early 1980s amid criticisms of public education, according to Mary Stanik, a spokeswoman for the Public Education Network, a national association of local education foundations.
Joe Martin works with 48 school systems in Georgia as executive director of the Consortium for Adequate School Funding in Georgia.
In recent years, local governments in Georgia have had to fund a larger percentage of school budgets as the state has shifted its funding formula, Mr. Martin said. Education foundations should “be doing something ... extra” for schools, he said — not sustaining them.
“If you depend on a private foundation to get up to an adequate level,” he said, “the state’s not doing its job.”
Fast fact
Education foundations are independent, community-based organizations that raise money and create programming for public schools, and develop community support for public education.
