Will middle and high schools need money for reading specialists? Or will they require funding to keep guidance counselors?
These are some of the questions one of the district's fund-raising groups, the All Schools Fund, faces as it launches its middle school fund-raising efforts this month.
Due to the uncertainty surrounding the 2004-2005 budget, the group has no idea how much money it needs to bring in or which staffing positions schools will need to pay for with ASF funds.
"Right now we're looking through a crystal ball, kind of," Elaine Hahn, the All Schools Fund secondary-school campaign chair.
At a time when districts across the state and country are working with smaller budgets due to sliding revenues and state cuts, pressure on fund-raising organizations like ASF has increased.
But without knowing how much they need or how the money will be spent, organizers fear it will be harder to get the message out about their secondary campaign and more difficult to get people to donate.
"In this case, we don't know what the needs will be, we just want to be as prepared as we can for what happens," Hahn said.
The group does have a suggested contribution of $180 per student, Hahn said, or $1 for each day a student is in school. With 5,638 students at the middle school level, that could translate to as much as a little more than $1 million. As of last Friday, ASF had no funds pledged to its middle school campaign.
Hahn, who is also the Palo Alto PTA Council's vice president and Palo Alto Foundation for Education liaison, expects ASF will have a better picture of possible cuts in January when the formalities for the state's 2005 budget start shaping up in Sacramento.
ASF began in response to a new district policy passed in 2002 to centralize and equalize school fund-raising for staffing positions. The policy goes into effect during the 2004-05 school year.
Previously, schools could add employees like classroom aides if their PTAs could foot the bill. Now, donations are pooled and re-distributed on a per-student basis. ASF funding can be used at a school's discretion and is intended to go toward short-term and ongoing needs.
ASF has broken its fund-raising campaigns into three categories: elementary, middle and high school. So far it has raised $800,000 of its $1.125 million goal in pledges for the elementary school campaign.
The elementary fund-raising was more concrete because the PTAs have a history of raising funds for some staffing positions, Hahn said. Therefore, at that level they knew more what they needed. Meanwhile, middle and high schools haven't really had private funds raised for staff positions.
Like the elementary level campaign, ASF secondary campaign funds will most likely go to staffing needs at local secondary schools. But unlike the elementary schools, ASF is looking primarily to families and locals, not schools' PTAs to pledge funding via their school sites. This week ASF sent mailings to families of all middle and high school students in Palo Alto, asking for contributions.
Hahn thinks secondary schools aren't as aware of ASF as elementary schools, so she wants to establish it with middle and high school families as a group the district and school principals support.
Rachel Metz can be e-mailed at rmetz@paweekly.com
