“Hope Fund” for Public Schools?

Lone Star Elementary Principal Elizabeth Kavanaugh and Arlington’s East Point Church members are to be commended for pooling the church’s resources—volunteer work hours—to clean up the school over the holiday break. Churches and volunteers around the community have generously stepped up to the plate, the Times Union reported recently, to tutor, mentor, clean and paint at schools throughout Jacksonville. As a former azalea-planting, closet-cleaning, fund-raising volunteer for my children’s school, I value the spirit in which these work hours are so generously given by so many. Duval’s 30,000 PTA members, many of whom make up a huge unpaid workforce for our schools, come to mind.

But I’m also appalled. The Lone Star article appeared in a section-front spot in the Times Union. And for more than a month these spots have been dedicated to the newspaper’s annual holiday season “Hope Fund” feature: a series of portraits of people in dire need of contributions from the Times Union’s generous readers. So I was conditioned and primed to read about a family in economic devastation, caused by illness, disability, unemployment, or refugee hardships. Instead, I read about how the public schools, too, are in dire straits, begging community organizations and businesses for help.

Just in case you think I’m exaggerating, consider the discussion that emerged at a recent SAC meeting at my children’s elementary school. The professionals there employ data-keeping techniques that allow them to zero-in on specific learning deficits that must be addressed in order for a given at-risk child to progress. Teachers and other personnel have the science that if properly applied, can make the difference between a little child learning to read and a little child being left behind. But due to budget cuts, my children’s principal is forced to choose which children will receive interventions: the younger, more malleable at-risk students, or the older ones who must pass the FCAT. She might be able to serve all of them, she tells us, if she could get a business sponsorship to help underwrite the tutoring and Saturday school. Or, she says, she could put the entire supplies budget towards these interventions; and ask parents to bring in gift cards to office and art supply stores.

Sure, as a parent, I’ll do that as often as I possibly can. As will other parents, who also bring stamps, toilet paper, paper towels, copy paper, etc. to the school, regularly. But where does it end? Are we going to be asked to send in light bulbs and floor wax next? Are we going to be asked to find corporate business sponsors to underwrite teachers’ salaries, or to pay the school’s electric bill?

Or are we going to demand, even in these hard times, that state lawmakers get their priorities straight? The assault on both the morale and the budgets of Florida’s educators began about a decade ago—amidst $20 billion in tax giveaways—and long before the 2008 market crash. Lawmakers need to act now, in anticipation of economic recovery, to dedicate a sustainable income source to public education in Florida. We can hold lawmakers accountable for fulfilling their constitutional “paramount duty” to provide a “high quality” education for all students in Florida, or we can sit and watch while our public schools become the next “Hope Fund” recipients.

This entry was posted on Friday, January 1st, 2010 at 5:04 PM and is filed under Miscellaneous. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.