By Liam O'Donoghue

FOR THE SECOND year in a row, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has proposed alleviating the budget crisis by cutting education funding. Following Schwarzenegger's recent State of the State speech, San Francisco Unified School District Board of Education president Dr. Dan Kelly lamented the financial ruins of California's formerly outstanding school system. Tracing this current mess to another Republican actor turned politician, he said, "One of the most destructive threats to the social fabric of California is that we've been starving the public school system since the 1960s, when Reagan was governor. This was a place of opportunity for poor people and immigrants. You could come here and get a great education no matter what your background was, but we've moved away from that, and now we're near the bottom."

Kelly's dismal assessment was confirmed by a major study released Jan. 3 by the Rand Corp., which placed California 48th in student achievement on national standardized tests, ahead of only Louisiana and Mississippi. California has fallen from spending about $400 above the national average a student in the 1969-70 school year, during the tail end of the golden era mentioned by Kelly, to $600 below the national average in 1999-2000. Despite the fact that California teachers' salaries (adjusted for inflation) have remained stagnant during this 30-year period, averaging about $39,000, teachers now spend between $700 and $2,000 of their own money annually to supply their classrooms with necessary materials, according to California Teachers Association spokesperson Sandra Jackson. Adding to the teachers' woes was Schwarzenegger's decision under last year's budget plan to suspend the Teacher Retention Tax Credit that allowed educators to reclaim up to $1,500 of these expenses.

With no end in sight for California's financial quagmire, SFUSD and its teachers have gratefully embraced any kind of philanthropy – from "wish list" partnerships with local businesses to fundraiser promotions by national chain stores like Barnes and Noble – that benefit the city's shortchanged students. According to SFUSD spokesperson Melissa Mooney, "Contributions from the community are crucial given the budget crisis that we find ourselves in. It all helps greatly."

United Educators of San Francisco president Dennis Kelly is frustrated at the district's reliance on philanthropy, and he's concerned about the possible influence of private capital in public classrooms. However, he grudgingly acknowledges its practical importance. "As 'nice' as such efforts are, they basically constitute charity for the schools," he said. "It is difficult to say no when in need, but the role of education in society is demeaned when it is the stepchild fed with handouts.... Schools and teachers should be independent of commercial influence."

Considering the indisputable influence of local business moguls – such as financier Warren Hellman, chair of the district's Business Advisory Council, and Gap founder Don Fisher, whose millions have been injected into everything from school board races to education-related propositions – on SFUSD Superintendent Arlene Ackerman, Kelly's concerns seem reasonable. Some examples of philanthropy from the business community have far less potential (or ambition) for systemic influence, however, but have had serious impacts on local schools, nonetheless.

Cole Hardware's School Assistance Program started in 1994 and within five years had established partnerships with more than 100 schools and organizations in the Bay Area. Under the partnerships, when customers mention the school they're "friends" with when purchasing products from any of Cole's four San Francisco stores, 10 percent of the purchase gets donated to the school. Cole also donates gift cards to school fundraiser auctions and gives cases of "Clearly Cole Hardware" water bottles to fundraiser events, where schools can sell them for $1 each. "It's a win-win situation," Cole owner Rick Karp said. "They make money, and we get to have our name tied to the fundraiser. We give away about 25,000 bottles every year."

In 2000, Craig Newmark, the founder of Craigslist, approached Karp about using his ubiquitous Web site to help promote the online wish-list aspect of Cole's program. The wish list allows donors to fund specific proposals submitted by teachers for classroom materials that can be purchased at Cole Hardware stores. "People should realize that sometimes donating $25 or $100 can make a big difference," Newmark said. "Some classrooms might have enough supplies but no jump ropes or kick balls, so those are some of the types of things that we're encouraging people to contribute, because I remember really enjoying that type of thing when I was a kid."

Newmark came up with the idea of partnering with Cole Hardware after talking with his neighbor Pam Heyda, a second grade teacher at Albion Horrall Elementary School in San Mateo. Explaining the origin of Craigslist's involvement with this program, which now results in about $10,000 worth of donations annually, Heyda said, "When I got my job teaching, I didn't have any supplies in my classroom. I had a very small budget and ended up having to buy a lot of books and markers and things like that with my own money. During some of my conversations with Craig, I would say, 'I know in the regular business world people don't have to buy their own pens and computers and desk supplies, but I've got to buy almost everything for my kids and this classroom, which is pretty much empty.' "

Since posting her requests on the wish list, Heyda has gotten everything from pencils to boxes of Kleenex donated to her classroom. "When we were learning about measurements, I didn't have enough rulers for the whole class, but then I got all these brand-new rulers donated," she said. "It's great because the donations can be used right away, but then reused year after year."

In the spring of 2000, Charles Best, a Bronx, N.Y., public high school teacher who was living in his parents' basement, invested $10,000 of his own money to launch a Web site called DonorsChoose.org. Promoting the philosophy that "Our teachers know their students and their learning needs best," DonorsChoose uses the wish-list model to allow individuals and companies to fund specific proposals and has generated almost $2.7 million in donations since its inception. Although the demand for regional expansion has been extraordinary, one of three new branches opened in San Francisco last fall, and already 256 Bay Area teachers have submitted proposals resulting in about $60,000 worth of donations. Becky Johnson, the executive director of the Bay Area DonorsChoose organization, consulted with Karp and Newmark before launching the branch and realized the practicality of their common mission. "It's really important to work for changes at the systemic and policy levels," she said, "but, meanwhile, there are students in every school that need to be taught and need these resources today. This model is based on citizen philanthropy."

One of the first local teachers to utilize DonorsChoose was Kim Peters, a fifth grade teacher at 21st Century Preparatory Academy in Bayview. She was excited when her $563 proposal for math books, software, and games was funded in less than two weeks, and she plans on using the program again. "Submitting the proposal was pretty easy and user-friendly," Peters said. "The materials were sent straight to the school. It's nice because they take out the middle man, so the donors know exactly where the money [or resources are] going."

Despite the immediate benefits of DonorsChoose, Johnson acknowledges that the rapid and large response from local teachers scrambling to submit proposals indicates a need for increased school funding, and that private philanthropy will never be an adequate substitute for state support. Board of Education commissioner Eric Mar believes that such philanthropy can even hurt the battle for increased education funding by creating the impression that private donations are solving the problem. "There's the perception that schools are doing fine because Wells Fargo or wealthy individuals are coming to the rescue," Mar said. "But while rich people may be helping their 'pet schools,' others are being left behind."

Mar was also bothered by another recent fundraiser program involving a promotion that encouraged parents to download Barnes and Noble vouchers from the SFUSD Web site. According to Barnes and Noble community relations manager Oscar Moreno de la Rosa, the holiday fundraiser was the most successful deal between the bookselling giant and area schools to date, and there are plans for further promotions in the future. Kelly estimated that about $1,000 was raised for the entire district. Mar said, "The Barnes and Noble deal was troubling because there are a lot of independent book stores that people could be directed towards, but [the district] directed them towards this big chain bookstore."

Mar said he would be more supportive of a partnership that supported a locally owned business but also stressed that such promotions should work to build relationships between parents and teachers. One recent fundraiser that met this criteria was a voucher-style promotion sponsored by Sports Basement, a two-store chain, locally owned by childhood friends Tom Phillips and Eric Prosnitz. The deal, conceived by Parents for Public Schools, allowed customers to download flyers that would donate 10 percent of purchases to schools and also involved a "Family Fitness Workshop" that encouraged parents and children to come to the Sports Basement for free yoga classes and fitness games led by district P.E. teachers. No SFUSD resources were expended promoting the event, and a Sports Basement representative reported that its success has caused the owners to look into sponsoring more school benefits.

"Both public and private schools do all kinds of fundraisers," Kelly explained, "like selling coupon books, or candy sales, or magazines; this is nothing new. They're traditional methods of raising extra funds across the country. But you can't rely on those for the school district's major needs. The money from these is discretionary, so there are not a lot of bureaucratic strings attached, but it's no substitute for adequate funding."

CTA spokesperson Jackson has concerns similar to those of Mar and Kelly and explained how well-intentioned but scattered fundraisers cannot even come close to making up for the massive budget cuts increasingly suffered by California schools in the post-boom era. "With $9.8 billion cut from the $50 billion education budget over the last four years, there's no way that business donations are going to make up that difference, and we don't want to let the state think that they have less of a responsibility because there are other entities coming to our aid."

Schwarzenegger's latest proposal, which involves postponing payments of money owed to schools under Proposition 98, a voter-approved education funding "guarantee", is the latest in a series of measures that has frustrated many of California's teachers. Many point to such disheartening decisions as last year's teacher tax credit cut (a move recently mirrored by the federal government) as developments that have made the task of serving the state's six million elementary and secondary school students – almost 13 percent of the entire nation's school-age population – even more challenging. A national study released last year found that teachers spend an average of $458 on their own supplies, but Heyda expressed that it's not only the financial side of these cuts that hurts teachers' morale. "The tax break wasn't a huge amount of money," she said, "but to me, it was symbolic of the government saying, 'We know you're putting your own money into your classroom, and we just want to give you a little something back.' To me, that really showed that I was being valued, it showed a little respect, and now that it's gone, we're back on our own again." Heyda quipped, "I'm sure they're spending that savings on something important ... like missiles and things."

Still, according to SFUSD's Mooney, every SFUSD teacher is provided with the materials for the curriculum, including books, worksheets, and supplemental materials, at no personal cost. But with teachers flooding programs like DonorsChoose and individual schools clamoring for fundraising partnerships, and Ackerman's reliance on the business community to guide the district through this financial dilemma, there's little argument that California's classrooms are rife with financial shortcomings. "The conservative direction of education policy is definitely having a negative impact on the schools," Mar said. "When teachers aren't supported by decent salaries and they're not even getting state support for the supplies they buy themselves, it hurts the students, especially in low-income schools without affluent PTAs that help provide adequate materials. These budget cuts are furthering inequalities in schools that already exist, making a serious problem even worse."