The first time I heard about PTA auctions was when one of our teacher education students was hired at a local elementary school in an affluent neighborhood as a science specialist. She loved the school and was thrilled to be able to specialize in science but hesitated for a moment before accepting because the position was funded by the PTA and she wasn't sure how long the funding would last.
What? Specialized teaching not available to kids in other schools? Funded directly by parents?
And thus, I began to learn about how private fundraising is one of the drivers of school inequalities between schools within the same school district.
With stresses on local and state education budgets, the long-standing tradition of PTAs raising money for the teacher appreciation week lunch or field trips is now being leveraged instead to fund extras for children in only some schools.
This excellent article from Seattle's local public media summarizes how these tensions are playing out in Seattle schools. Parents at schools with few low-income children are raising enough at school auctions to hire a full-time theater teacher, extra support teachers, a part-time school nurse, and arts programs.
Meanwhile, coalitions of lower-income schools have begun organizing "move-a-thons" where children and families do fun physical activities for pledged donations and schools then split the proceeds. They raise enough to buy extra copy paper and coffee for parent-teacher conference nights (and I encourage you, reader, to note that adequate supplies of paper and coffee are not covered in school budgets).
In my state, local and state PTAs have been grappling for years with the inequities of this private school-centered fundraising; both have recommended that parents stop focusing on fund-raising to work instead on advocacy for system-wide funding and other education policy.
Yet as enrollment drops in public schools with declining birthrates, the loss of any families to private schools erodes public funding for schools (funding is based on enrollment), so districts try to appease parents who could easily withdraw their children. But rather than advocate for better funding for all schools, too many of those parents instead invest deeply in the schools their own children attend.
All of this is driven by the economic segregation of schools, driven in turn by rising housing costs.
Especially in expensive areas like those where I live (Seattle), low-income families are concentrated within neighborhoods with apartment buildings and older, smaller single family homes. Usually, all the adults in these families work and families have little extra income (and few surplus high-value possessions to donate) for school auctions. Struggling neighborhood businesses can't easily donate to local schools.
Other schools in other neighborhoods serve professional families who buy up and renovate larger homes, often drawn by the "excellent schools" in the neighborhood. Many of these professional families can donate time at their vacation property, private dinners from chef friends, their own professional services, or selections from their wine cellars to the school auction. The neighborhood organic bakeries and yoga studios donate gift cards. Professional women staying at home to raise children invest hours soliciting auction items and organizing the festive evening (professional auctioneers, rooms packed with silent auction items, food, drink, and after-auction parties are common).
In this system, "I only want what's best for my child" translates to "best means better than what other children can have, obviously".
When public institutions are under-funded, affluent families create competitive advantage for their own children. As the most politically powerfully families in the district, they also decide whether or not to work for equity for all children.
And their answer, often, is "not".
