Vancouver schools raised more than $3 million last year with the greatest proportion of that money funding field trips, playgrounds and technology.
The $3.45 million raised is reported in the recently released VSB Fundraising Survey 2012/2013 undertaken by a subcommittee of the Vancouver School Board’s advocacy committee.
“It’s the first time we’ve done it,” said Mike Lombardi, vice chairperson of the Vancouver School Board. “Increasingly, what we’ve been hearing anecdotally the last couple of years is that fundraising is creating extra burdens on the schools… so we thought let’s take a snapshot and see what it looks like on the ground.”
The presentation released by the school board doesn’t specify which schools raised how much. “We made a commitment to schools that we wouldn’t actually print what their schools raised, but it did range from $1,000 to $20,000,” Lombardi said. “The first thing [schools] ask is are we going to see this on the front page of the newspaper?”
Ninety-three of 93 responding schools said they’d undertaken grant applications, which could include gaming and corporate grants, 90 per cent of 84 schools said they’d participated in fundraising initiated by a parent advisory council, and 67 per cent of 62 respondents reported receiving individual and community donations. Accordingly, the bulk of money raised came from grants, PAC fundraising and individual and community donations.
The survey report will go to the board’s management and coordinating committee in December. The report’s authors hope the management committee will support reviewing the district’s fundraising policy, which Lombardi says was adopted in 1989.
“And that we redouble our efforts to advocate for more stable, predictable and adequate funding [from the provincial government] so we can start to reduce the need for fundraising,” he said.
Lombardi said money raised by schools was traditionally used to fund field trips and sports, but now fundraising for playgrounds and technology are on the top of the agenda of PAC meetings because of downloading by the provincial government.
“We’re starting to see the impact of $100 million being cut out of the [education] budget over 10 years,” he said, adding “It would take us $47 million today to bring us back to 2002 funding levels.”
The presentation lists the pros and cons of fundraising, including that doing so “benefits the students and brings our parent community and staff together in a very positive way.”
That statement echoes Education Minister Peter Fassbender’s remarks to the Courier last month. He said there would be no new money for playgrounds and that fundraising brings people together. “So when we can build cooperation with PACs and communities and collaboration with other community groups, that’s a positive for everyone.”
Lombardi agrees fundraising can bring a community together.
“But when you’re fundraising every month of every year for school books, the library books, for the playground, for field trips, it gets to be a bit much,” he said. “That’s not bringing the community together, it’s creating tension in the community.”
Seismic safety, money for playgrounds, access to technology and playground safety were reported to be of greatest concern to parents at the citywide parent advisory council meeting last month.
