Think Out Loud

Some Portland students want a new system for school fundraising

By Elizabeth Castillo (OPB)
May 30, 2023 5:28 p.m. Updated: June 6, 2023 5:43 p.m.

Broadcast: Tuesday, May 30

In Portland, school fundraising greatly varies from school to school. At Lincoln High School, parent-led fundraising efforts help students go on trips and access events. But other schools in the district might only see a fraction of the funds available. Lincoln’s student-run news outlet, The Cardinal Times, recently published an editorial opposing how the current system works and calling for the establishment of a districtwide general fund.

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In a response to the piece, Friends of Lincoln, the fundraising arm for the high school, noted that Portland Public Schools requires fundraising organizations to share some of what they raise with the district. Currently, schools can keep the first $10,000 that they raise. But for funds beyond that, a third of their totals must be shared with the districtwide PPS Parent Fund.

The organization wrote, “Friends of Lincoln would love a world where schools receive all the funding students deserve and equity is optimized, but that is not the world as it exists today.” It added, “eliminating foundations like Friends of Lincoln, we believe, would make things worse, not better.”

We hear more from Issac Coltman, an opinion editor for The Cardinal Times, and Mary Carney, a managing print editor for the outlet. They’re both juniors at the high school and join to tell us more about what they’d like to see change.

Note: This transcript was computer generated and edited by a volunteer.

Dave Miller: This is Think Out Loud on OPB. I’m Dave Miller, back in Portland after our wonderful week in John Day. We’re going to start today with a question about equity and public school funding. For decades now, private foundations in wealthier neighborhoods have raised money primarily for their local schools. Now, students at one of those schools, Lincoln High School in Northwest Portland, are saying that the entire system needs to be re-examined. The editorial board for Lincoln’s The Cardinal Times argued recently that since school fundraisers indirectly promote racial inequality, private contributions should go not to specific schools but to a district-wide general fund. Issac Coltman is the opinions editor for The Cardinal Times. Mary Carney is the managing print editor. They’re both juniors at Lincoln and they both join us now. It’s great to have both of you on the show.

Issac Coltman/Mary Carney: Thank you.

Miller: Issac, first. When did you first become aware of the current fundraising system?

Coltman: So I was in the newsroom for an issue a couple of issues back. And we were talking about how arts classes in our school need to source donations in order to fund their own art supplies. And I didn’t know anything about the subject so I just took on the article and started talking to all the arts teachers at our school. And over and over and over again, when I was talking to them, they kept mentioning our foundation, Friends of Lincoln, as someone that was a big help. And that was just sort of the extent to which I was familiar with the fundraising until after I wrote the article.

I got an email from the teacher of product design at our school. They mentioned that there’s a discussion around the District about how schools are allowed to fundraise for themselves. And that’s not necessarily something that’s widely accepted. So at that point, I started looking into what is the system that we have now that allows schools to independently fundraise for themselves. And is that system one that creates equity, like the District says that they want to foster?

Miller: It’s been a little while since we’ve talked about this. Can you just remind us briefly how the system works?

Coltman: Ok. So some schools, not all, but some schools have independent 501c3 foundations that run their own fundraisers. And when they raise a certain amount of money over $10,000, the Portland Public School District (PPS) says that it’s fostering equity by cutting 30% of the funds raised and giving it to a quote unquote “general fund”. Now that is really the extent to which our school is really familiar with the system - that we donate and we fundraise and then a certain amount is sent to a nondescript fund. And that’s sort of the extent to which we’re fostering equity in the District. But there’s a sort of limitation to that.

Miller: According to a recent tax filing, the Friends of Lincoln, a nonprofit for your school, reported about $675,000 in total revenue in 2020, more than $850,000 the year before. What does this money go towards?

Coltman: [The money goes toward] things that the district can’t necessarily fund with the money it gives directly to Lincoln like extracurriculars. For example, a lot of our sports take money from the foundation. Also if people need flights to go to national competitions, then that might come from the Foundation. Art supplies, ceramic kilns, stuff like that. Anything that’s sort of ancillary that the District can’t pay for itself.

Miller: You point out that this money has paid for 16 full time equivalent (FTE) positions at Lincoln since 2017. Mary Carney, why did you think that this was an important enough issue for the board as a whole to get behind?

Carney: I think that as high school students who are a part of different programs and clubs at our high school, it’s easy for us to kind of understand the effect that funding has on the high school experience. Or understand the effect of class sizes, and teachers, and all those things that require funding. So I think that when we were looking at the different models and statistics about how much money is raised, where that money goes, which schools are able to fundraise and which schools are not able to fundraise, it was easy for us to kind of imagine the effect it would have on our high school experience if we weren’t able to fundraise or if we didn’t have adequate funding for those programs that we’re a part of. Then when we were thinking about the effect that would have, it kind of made it obvious that this is an issue that is really important and one that needs to be talked about, especially from the perspective of high school students.

Miller: Has this made you think, Mary, about how you’ve benefited from this fundraising?

Carney: Absolutely, because this is so a part of being a student at Lincoln. You kind of don’t think about how much of your experience is… how much you benefit from the amount of money that we receive. But when you look at what other schools have, or more accurately what they don’t have, it really makes me think, like, “How would my high school experience be different if I was at one of those schools?” And it makes you very appreciative for what you have, as a student at Lincoln.

Miller: What’s something that you think you can directly attribute to the generosity of, largely parents, but the local community?

Carney: Yeah, I think that as a member of the newspaper, I know that we receive a lot of our funding from the District as a Career and Technical Education (CTE) class. But we’ve also had certain special projects that have been partly funded by Friends of Lincoln. And so I think that getting the opportunity to have those experiences that are really beneficial to my high school experience just makes me feel very grateful to have that extra money.

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Miller: I wanna run a couple arguments by both of you from the Friends of Lincoln, the nonprofit that sent us a copy of the letter that they sent to you yesterday. That was about five plus weeks after your editorial ran. One of the points that they made is that because the District uses an equity lens funding model in its budgetary decisions, directing funds to higher needs schools, some schools receive about twice as much per student on average than other schools. This is because of, say, federal funding or money for Title I funding based on, for one example, the percentage of students who get free or reduced lunches.

But the argument, if I understand it here and Issac I’d love your take on this first, is that this private foundation fundraising is, in a sense, a way to make up for that difference. That schools with poor families, poor students, get more per student and fundraising, say at Lincoln, can equalize that. What’s your response?

Coltman: I think that’s exactly right. The problem with allowing schools that are already benefiting the most in this system to further fundraise themselves, is that while it’s looking for a mission of equality, every school gets the same amount of money, it’s not looking for a mission of equity, which is what we actually need to be doing in this district. If we’re trying to shore up achievement gaps between schools in this district, if we are allowing the schools that can already benefit the most, like Lincoln for example, to fundraise and further their own advantage, we are further going to create disparities between this district. And that’s the exact opposite of PPS’s mission, despite the money that is being cut off from foundations to be given to the general fund that it exists now.

Miller: Mary Carney, another argument that they put forward is that private fundraising at schools like Lincoln can help less privileged students specifically at Lincoln where, they point out, 12% of the student body is on free or reduced lunch. What’s your response?

Carney: I think that it’s incredibly important to realize that there definitely are students at Lincoln who are less fortunate and less privileged and absolutely need that extra money that comes from fundraising. What I would say, and maybe something that hasn’t entirely been communicated by our position, is that if we were to do a general fund model and get rid of individual fundraisers at schools, then there would absolutely still be money coming into schools like Lincoln. As it is right now, with the current general fund within PPS, Lincoln doesn’t receive any money. But that kind of equation would need to be modified if we were to move over to a general fund because, like Friends of Lincoln is pointing out, there are students at Lincoln who need extra help and need extra funds. And state funding sometimes is just not enough for certain programs.

So I would say that if we were to move over to a general fund, we would definitely still need to receive money. But there would be a larger pool of money, after it’s been equitably given out, for schools like Lincoln to still receive funding.

Miller: Issac Coltman, in the end, after considering a couple different new versions of how to proceed, you and the team decided that instead of having private fundraising that was really connected to schools there, instead, should be a general fund.

I just wanna spend a second on one of the options that you considered and decided to not argue for. And that’s changing the percentage of locally raised money that would go, in the name of equity, to the general community. So, for example, instead of having 30% go towards other schools, 75%. Why didn’t you, in the end, endorse that idea?

Coltman: Because it comes back down to the fundamental problem with having our fundraising being set to individual schools. If we had it so that Friends of Lincoln still was responsible for the same fundraising that they are now. But now, every time a member of our communities donates a dollar, only one quarter of it goes to the school. That’s not a good system for the people who are donating, the people who are running these fundraisers and it’s not a good system for the people who are receiving the majority of the money. It felt like it would cause more resentment than it would community, than creating a community across the entire district.

Miller: In terms of having money tied to a specific school and having the majority of it not go to that school, I take your point. But effectively, how is that different from the general fund idea that you are pushing for where parents or community members from any particular neighborhood school would give money that could be then distributed, that would then be distributed to every single school based on some model that would yet to be determined. Effectively, how is that different?

Coltman: It’s the difference between focusing on the school versus focusing on the District. The system that we have now atomizes us so that parents feel that they are only financially responsible for giving to their specific school, which are designed on arbitrary school boundaries that divide up the city into many different districts that have nothing to do with one another. Our fundraiser only had Lincoln students, but that denies this community and it denies all other communities access to the art and the product and the the communities of other school districts. And if they are combined into one general fund, we’d find a lot more communication and a lot more community across the entirety of Portland, rather than just one side or the other. If we continue to have independent foundations, we will continue to have independent schools not connected together.

Miller: I wanna run one more argument by both of you from the schools Foundation. This was in a letter that they sent to us today and sent to you yesterday. They wrote:

“Friends of Lincoln would love a world where schools receive all the funding students deserve and equity is optimized. But that is not the world as it exists today. Eliminating foundations like Friends of Lincoln, we believe, would make things worse, not better. Arguing that eliminating foundations would spur change at the government level, is likely overly optimistic or, at best, would have clear negative effects on Lincoln and all PPS students in the near future. It’s essentially just another budget cut.”

Mary Carney, what’s your response?

Carney: I would say that in terms of spurring change in the District or having a world where there’s enough funding coming from the state level to fund all schools equitably, I would say that is another issue, an incredibly important issue. Public school funding is something that has been talked about and is currently being talked about and will probably always be talked about because it’s an incredibly important issue. I think what’s important in terms of fundraising is that the current system that we have has been going on since 1990. So that’s over 30 years. And we can say, well, let’s just wait around until we see the change at the state level and all schools are funded in the way that they should be. Or we can say, even though fundraising itself is actually just a stop gap to the bigger issue, we still need to change what’s happening now because it is creating inequality.

Miller: Issac Coleman, to go back to the point you were making earlier, I wonder if your argument is based on a really positive view of people’s sense of self and of their kids and of self-interest. Do you believe that community members now, say, at Lincoln or at Cleveland or anywhere, that they would give as much to a PPS-wide Foundation with the money being distributed, not 70% of their money going locally, but maybe 2%. Do you think they would give as much?

Coltman: I think that first you have to address the precedent on this issue. Lake Oswego and Tigard are both school districts right next to us that do have only one foundation for the entirety of the district. PPS is actually the only district in the local area that does still allow schools to independently fundraise for themselves. And also you have to understand that when you are addressing something as big as inequality, you have to take bold action that people don’t necessarily agree with at the time that you pass it. You don’t want to be focusing on changing people’s minds to match the policy, but passing the policy to change people’s minds. I think if we change the way that fundraising exists now into one that is a general fund, the attitudes of parents today would change into the future. And you also have to understand that there are new kindergarten parents every single year. These things, in education especially, are special and that attitudes can change very quickly because the population that you are actually educating and the people who are participating in it are constantly changing as the years go by.

Miller: Issac Coltman and Mary Carney, thanks very much for joining us.

Carney: Thank you.

Coltman: Thanks.

Miller: Issac Coltman and Mary Carney are juniors at Portland’s Lincoln High School. They both work on The Cardinal Times.

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