Behind every school fun fair, magazine drive and dance-a-thon is a group of parents who want the best education possible for their children and who are willing to put in both volunteer time and/or money to fill a gap that provincial education funding has left in their children’s school experience. In Kerry Clare’s Today’s Parent article entitled, “Another school fundraiser? Rethinking funding for education” Clare mentions that at her daughter’s publicly funded school, a litany of fundraising initiatives have been introduced over the years to each fund specific programs.
“Scrap the magazine sale and say goodbye to new classroom literacy materials. The dance-a-thon came about one year when the board had no funding for new computers. This year, an enterprising parent organized the sale of school-branded hoodies to finance the replacement of decades-old gym mats. These campaigns—and the parent volunteers who run them—are filling a massive gap in education funding, and teachers and students have come to count on them.”
Many reports about school fundraising over the years have examined the inequity in school fundraising, depending on the socioeconomic demographics of a given school community. For instance, the March 1, 2018 article in the Toronto Star, entitled, “Fundraising widens gap between have and have-not students, report finds”, citing the latest research by People for Education. However, these reports seldom question why school fundraising, beyond the odd community-building event, exists in the first place.
As one parent, who chairs the fundraising committee at her school, noted in her letter to the editor in response to the Toronto Star article, “I believe the media does a disservice to the children of Ontario by repeatedly writing stories about “have” and “have-not” schools. The provincial government and the media have divided parents with these kinds of stories, when the real reason for inequity in Ontario’s schools is completely inadequate education funding from the Province for all schools.“
Sadly, our provincial government, which has held all the power over education and school funding for over two decades has underfunded education and schools for over two decades. Until we address this root cause and, as citizens, demand that our provincial government rethink how they fund schools and education in Ontario, there will continue to be year over year growth in school fundraising.
Cookie dough anyone?