School foundations widen funding gaps

The movie "Field of Dreams" made hope a universal quote: "If you build it, they will come."

That must have been school officials' thoughts when they designed a $21 million Ooltewah Elementary School with an art classroom and a science lab, since the Hamilton County Department of Education hasn't employed elementary art teachers for years, and Ooltewah doesn't have funding for a full-time science teacher.

But Miranda Perez, mother of a 9-year-old Ooltewah student, recently told Chattanooga Times Free Press reporter Tim Omarzu she was unwilling to wait for school and county officials to right a fundamental funding wrong. So she launched the Ooltewah Harrison Education Foundation, nicknamed D9 for its location in Board of Education District 9. It is modeled after Signal Mountain's Mountain Education Foundation and more than 100 other education foundations in Tennessee and across the nation.

It is an admirable action. Who can quibble with parents motivated enough to raise $200,000 or $500,000 a year to hire teachers and fill other gaps in the dwindling list of programs paid for by cash-strapped school districts?

Well, in at least one way, we can and will quibble with it.

Education foundations are great for the "haves" communities, but what about the have-nots? In absence of a county government's priority for all-kids' education, don't these foundations just widen the already too-wide education gap?

Proponents of the localized foundations dismiss that notion by saying that the Chattanooga Public Education Foundation with a budget of $5 to $6 million a year helps all schools. Similarly, they say, Title 1, a federal program, provides extra funds for schools with children from low-income homes.

But they are wrong. PEF spends its money primarily on teacher and principal leadership training for all schools, though some years ago PEF did administer a $12 million grant over eight years with programs in the county's eight lowest performing schools with some dramatic improvements. That funding, offered at the time from the Benwood Foundation, is no longer available as Benwood has shifted its focus.

As for Title 1 funds, they are, in fact, distributed to schools based on the percent of low-income students, but that money is used for basics like reading. So the added benefits of art or music or sometimes even science still get little or no assistance at poor schools - even though those subjects are known to improve overall academic performance.

Hamilton County now has five foundations that raise money for extras at their specific schools of interest. The Mountain Education Foundation raises $500,000 a year for Signal Mountain schools, paying the salaries of 11 full- and part-time teachers, including art teachers at Nolan and Thrasher elementary schools and a college counselor at Signal Mountain Middle-High School. And D9's goal is raise $200,000 for five Ooltewah-Harrison schools. Normal Park Museum Magnet School in North Chattanooga has a foundation, as does the Chattanooga School for the Liberal Arts in East Brainerd and East Ridge's three schools.

But what about the other 60 schools in the system? What, especially, about the inner city schools with poor children and poor parents who lack the clout and money to nurture a foundation?

It would seem that by accidental collateral damage what these foundations do is widen our county's education gap. And like it or not, that limits opportunity in the region for all of our children.

Some 30 states - including Tennessee, Georgia and Alabama - still spend less per pupil than before the recession, a recent federal report found. Tennessee's per pupil spending is down by 0.8 percent, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, while Georgia's spending is 11 percent less than pre-recession and Alabama is down 17.8 percent.

Hamilton County Schools Superintendent Rick Smith says the county doesn't have the money to bring these kinds of what we'll call "extra basics" back to all of our schools.

"You're looking at a little bit over $2 million (just for art classes)," Smith said.

More correctly local officials haven't made it a priority - perhaps in part because the very parents who can put appropriate pressure on county commissioners and school board members have chosen instead to act on their own.

This is not to say that parents at Ooltewah or Signal Mountain schools or any community shouldn't rally around their children and public schools. They absolutely should.

But they - and all of us -really should rally around all of our public schools.

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