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Schools

The Have and Have Nots: Should Schools Be Forced To Share Their Fundraising Money?

At last night's school board meeting district leaders decided they needed to come up with a solution to concerns raised by cash-strapped parent volunteers.

Is it fair for one school to raise more money than another and pay for extra activities while another school that didn’t raise as much goes without?

This is the question the Castro Valley Unified School District will try to answer in the coming months.

This topic was the only item on the table at Thursday’s school board meeting – a meeting attended by only one parent.

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Superintendent Jim Negri said the answer to the issue will be tough.

“We’re not looking to direct how people spend their funds or to take funds away from anyone,” said Negri, “but how do we engage the parents to ensure [everyone] a quality education? How do we get a process that ensures equity?”

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Negri was quick to point out that equity is not the same for everyone. He said the district wants to ensure that every school has the means to do activities they want to do - which doesn’t mean everyone gets the exact same thing.

Recently this issue was put to some Castro Valley Patch readers to comment on.

“If the certain schools are putting in the efforts to raise the money, I don’t understand what’s so unfair about it,” said Leah Enos. “That just shows that some schools need better fundraising ideas and more parental support.”

“There are so many things unfair when some of the schools have parents with money and others don’t,” said Todd Finlay.

Adding fuel to the discussion is the economic downturn that’s swept the country. California public schools have seen budgets slashed to historic lows so volunteer fundraising has become more important than ever.

Negri said the next step is to meet with the Parent Leadership Council for the district and school principals so that a good solution can be ironed out.

The process could take months, but he said it’s important to make sure that each school in the district has the means to do all of the activities that make them unique.

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