Front page Sunday early edition



Can you spare a million?
Public schools go after alumni to fund big-ticket projects 
      
By Carolyn Bower Of the Post-Dispatch

Sales of wrapping paper, entertainment books and T-shirts have become familiar ways for schools to pay for playground equipment, field trips and even classroom supplies. Now public schools have found another way to pay for extras.

Donations. Big ones. Gifts that can pay for the sort of projects that school tax money might have financed in more flush times.

Consider:

For years, private schools and colleges and universities have raised millions of dollars from alumni for building renovations, teachers, programs and technology.

Now public school districts have begun to follow suit.

Some districts have found themselves in a financial squeeze because local and state revenue has not kept pace with rising expenses. At the same time, schools face higher expenses in offering extra help to prepare students to meet tough standards for reading, writing, science and math. In addition, some St. Louis County districts are receiving less money than in the past to educate children in the desegregation program.

"At a time when money is tight, we have to learn to think in a different way," Kirkwood Superintendent David Damerall said.

Kirkwood's district foundation plans to appeal to 28,000 alumni next year for a couple of million dollars to invest in science upgrades, including science equipment.

About one of every three or four of the nation's 16,000 school districts has a foundation, most generating $100,000 to $500,000 a year, said Pete Karabatsos, a foundation development consultant based in Denver.

Although a number of school districts in the St. Louis region have foundations, including St. Louis Public Schools, many do not. More and more have begun to update databases of alumni, with an eye toward seeking donations.

Karabatsos said he has seen poor and affluent districts becoming entrepreneurial in raising money. Karabatsos said the effort is a relatively new movement in public education.

"Foundations are not to replace lost tax dollars," Karabatsos said. "Foundations established to replace tax dollars are not successful. Foundations established to take kids to the next level of excellence are successful."

On a shoestring

Affton school officials know what it is like to make do on a shoestring. The district won state recognition for distinction in performance for three years in a row while spending $1,700 less per pupil than the St. Louis County average.

At Affton High School, until this year, students ate in an institutional-green cafeteria. Students pronounced it dreary, dark and dungeonlike.

Bill Thompson, class of 1963, met his wife, Nancy, class of 1965, by a locker in a hall not far from that cafeteria. The Thompsons donated $1 million for the recent improvements at Affton High School. The Thompsons believe in public schools, Bill Thompson said, adding that schools such as Affton High can serve as the center of a community.

"Sometimes it is just not sufficient to depend on public funding to support things, especially enhancements," said Bill Thompson, chief executive officer of PIMCO, an investment management company based in Newport Beach, Calif. "Once in a while you have to reach out and find folks to step up and help out.

"There is no reason to think that Affton as a public school is any less deserving of delivering to kids the same things as (private schools such as) Burroughs or Principia."

University City High School Principal Beth Bender agrees.

"If private schools can raise those amounts of money, I don't know why it can't be that way for public schools," she said.

Although voters recently authorized a $9.6 million bond issue to pay for improvements at University City schools, the high school lacks the money for air conditioning or replacement of its aging pool and athletic complex, Bender said.

A group (Project Appleseed) led by parent Kevin Walker and other University City alumni sent letters last winter seeking donations from alumni. The group posted its plans online.

Bender now spends her nights thinking not only about air conditioning and a recreation center, but also about other renovations - space for the dance students now confined to the school's basement, improvements to a gym where plywood covers holes in the floor caused by a leaky roof, office space for each department, upgrades to allow the school to become wireless.

"CBC has done an amazing job," Bender said of the private high school that recently moved into a new building in west St. Louis County with a wireless computer network. "Why can't my kids have that? Why can't my staff have that? And I'm hearing alums say, 'Why not?'"

Stephen Bahn, class of 1969 at Ladue High School, saw the need for a field house and artificial field and track. Bahn became concerned that people who attend athletic events at a school with such a high academic reputation have to use portable toilets. Now Bahn is helping to coordinate a fund-raising campaign by Friends of Ladue High School Athletics.

"School districts are strapped," said Bahn, a commercial real estate broker. "Tax increases are getting turned down left and right. We can't wait for the school district to appropriate money. It is just not going to happen. We have to do it ourselves."

Controlling the money

The prospect of such large donations raises some issues for school leaders.

Who will control the money? Will projects follow a district's bidding process or be bid out privately? Will school officials have a say in naming rights? Will they allow buildings or spaces to be named for people? For corporations?

The Ladue School Board decided that although the alumni group would raise money on behalf of the district, the district would have final say on what the field house and improvements look like, where they are located and what, if any, names are allowed on the building. The board generally agreed it would not support using corporate names on the building. The project will be subject to the district's competitive bidding requirements.

The Clayton board has decided that while the Friends of Clayton Athletics will raise the money, the district will retain the right to handle the bidding, contracting and construction of the project. The board also reserves the right to sign off on the naming of the facility.

In University City, Walker said the alumni and parents would like to name a recreation building and rooms after donors. The group expects to submit a recommendation to the district's School Board this year.

Lynn Deane, president of the Ladue School Board, said board members spent several hours questioning Bahn's group. "This is a huge jump for us," Deane said. "We are grateful. I think this is a wave of the future. When school districts strapped for money want performance arts centers or science centers, this is how it will come to be."

Highland Superintendent Marvin Warner said the donation from the estate of Dorothy Kempff Freeman has been a boon in tight financial times.

"In our case, we had some very good fortune," he said. "We haven't actively gone out and sought this, but we would welcome other donations. Tomorrow would be fine."

In Affton, where the Thompsons approached school officials about making a gift, Superintendent Gay Tompkins said the entire community was touched.

"We hope other alumni will want to give back," she said. Affton High School students sipped coffee, nibbled french fries and talked with friends recently in the white, airy commons that opened with the start of school this year.

Of the Thompsons' gift, sophomore Dzana Beslagic, 15, said, "It's really generous for them to think of our school."

Kevin Eckert, 17, Affton's senior class president, said: "This really boosts school spirit. Our school has something to be proud of, to show off."

Eckert said if he makes enough money someday, he would give some of it to Affton High School.

"The way it affected us students, it would be cool to do the same." Copyright 2004 St. Louis Post-Dispatch

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THE UNIVERSITY CITY CAMPAIGN FOR PUBLIC SCHOOL IMPROVEMENT
projectappleseed.org
THE NATIONAL CAMPAIGN FOR PUBLIC SCHOOL IMPROVEMENT

  
 

  
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