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Schools

Kiddo!, Education Foundations Spearhead Success Model

State budget cuts, increased enrollment, and stale property tax revenues are keeping school fundraising nonprofit busy.

Unlike most entrepreneurs, when Trisha Garlock founded her non-profit organization 28 years ago, she hoped to be out of business within five years. But when your business is raising money for local schools, it's hard to fail in Mill Valley.

Due to state budget cuts, increased enrollment, and stale property tax revenues, the Mill Valley School District had to cut another $1.4 million from its budget for the 2010-2011 fiscal year.

The district projects a funding shortfall of at least $950 per enrolled student, up $200 from last year's estimate of $750. And once again, Kiddo!—the Mill Valley Schools Community Foundation—is raising money to help fill the gap.

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Kiddo! has already raised more than $14 million over the years through parent and business contributions, galas, golf tournaments and other events. According to its 990 filing with the Internal Revenue Service for the year ended June 30, 2008 - the most recent report filed by the organization - Kiddo! provided more than $1.4 million in grants Mill Valley's public schools, mostly in the form of grants for arts, music, drama and dance but also via mini-grants to teachers for small educational projects.

But as the non-profit organization ages, it's raising more and more money to fill wider gaps. For the upcoming school year, Garlock is hoping to contribute another $2 million—a record high. With half the money already raised, Garlock is "cautiously optimistic" that her agency will reach the goal. But that doesn't mean the state is off the hook.

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"When they spend [significantly more] per prisoner than per student in this state, there's something wrong," she said. "Maybe if they spent more on education, they wouldn't need so many prisons."

Funding for public schools is notoriously bad in California, where the state spends among the lowest per student compared to other states. In response to budget cuts, Garlock says Kiddo! had no choice but to grow.

Kiddo! was founded under another name in 1982 in response to Proposition 13, which drastically reduced school funding from property taxes. Initially, most of the cuts were to arts programming, deemed "non-essential." Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, Kiddo! picked up the tab on art and music, and later drama and poetry programs. But recently the foundation has been asked to contribute to public school staples like staffing and technology.

Tam Valley School principal Gail van Adelsberg says without Kiddo!, her school would be academically strong, but "completely un-enriched." The foundation funds 100 percent of the art, music, drama and poetry programs at Tam Valley, and recently contributed funds for classroom aides, library aides and laptop carts.

Van Adelsberg says Kiddo! came through for the school "in direct response to us saying we needed these things, and in direct response to budget cutbacks."

Despite the dire financial situation of public schools across the state, districts in Marin County remain among the luckiest. David Plank, the director of Policy Analysis for Public Education, says that foundations like Kiddo! are relatively small and scattered throughout the state — with the exception of Marin County, where practically every district has one. There are robust foundations in the Novato, Larkspur, Kentfield, San Rafael and Reed Union school districts. Combined, these organizations raise several million dollars per year for local public schools.

Mill Valley also has a separate foundation for the high school—the Tam High Foundation—that has contributed about $2 million since its inception in 1996. According to its IRS filing for the year ended July 31, 2009, the foundation issued more than $593,000 in grants during that period.

Garlock says the foundations share a spirit of camaraderie, meeting regularly to discuss challenges and share tactics. She said the foundations that get less per family—like San Rafael and Novato — find ways to raise money through community events.

"School foundations are becoming more and more important to just maintaining what we have," Garlock said. "We're not expanding anything."

The increasing need for foundations angers education advocates like Norton Grubb, a professor at UC Berkeley's Graduate School of Education and the author of "The Money Myth: School Resources, Outcomes and Equity."

"California was near the top in the 1950s and 1960s," he said. "But we've been on a march to the bottom for 60 years… The whole point of public schools, since the 1840s, is that we would have a set of common skills, with a common group of citizens that are uniformly prepared."

The rise of education foundations in wealthy districts exacerbates the quality disparities that already exist between public schools, he said.

Still, in districts like Mill Valley, parents are willing to pay extra before sacrificing the arts and other necessities. Funding for next year will cover all of the music, art, drama, and poetry programs, as well as the first through fifth grade classroom aides, library aides, teacher mini grants and a significant portion of technology funding.

Though she no longer entertains notions of being pushed out of business anytime soon, Garlock said, "We're just hoping that by 2015, schools will be back at the level they were at in 2007. The state is just decimating school budgets." 

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