Don't discount Audubon principal's plea for donations

Mike Thomas

COMMENTARY

March 15, 2009
School principal Trevor Honohan created quite a stir with the most reasonable of acts.

Given the reluctance of public officials to pay for public schools, he asked the public to chip in. His request came in a letter sent to parents of Audubon Park Elementary students.

"I will not settle for budget cuts that will rip apart the foundation that has been set at Audubon Park Elementary School," he wrote. "Hard working teachers that we value and love will be unemployed. There is only one solution and it begins with us all. It is time to pay for what we don't have now; otherwise we will pay for what we didn't have later."

He skipped the bake sale and went right for the $500 checks. That was the amount suggested for each child in the school, an amount that might buy you a couple of weeks at a top prep school. He would throw in the first $1,000 to cover his two kids. If everybody who got a letter tossed money in the hat, eight teachers would keep their jobs.

Low-income parents did not get a letter. For those who could afford to give more, he offered the inducement of naming a classroom, science lab or perhaps even the cafeteria after them. For those who could give a whole lot more, the name of the school might even be for sale.

The Who in Whoville

It seems that in the massive industrial complex of government schools, there are people passionate about educating children. Actually, there are a lot of them. And this particular one no longer could keep quiet about the damage being inflicted on his school.

Honohan is the Who in Whoville.

And everybody heard him.

But an idea that seems eminently sensible to you or me can set off nervous twitches in the very frightened world of large bureaucracies. And so Honohan's fundraiser was shut down by the Orange school district until further notice.

What if the idea spread?

What if parents all over Orange County, all over the state for that matter, began chipping in to keep their schools afloat?

That troubling scenario could give schools with more-affluent parents an advantage over schools with less-affluent parents. And that would resurrect the bitter past of inequality in school funding.

If schools are going to crash and burn, the logic goes, they should go down in solidarity.

Similar angst has been raised in the past over deep-pocketed PTAs at suburban schools versus no PTAs at inner-city schools.

I suppose there is some twisted sense of fairness here, even if almost half the kids at Audubon Park are from low-income families. But who are we kidding? More-affluent kids have access to more-educated parents, tutors, books, computers, science camps, math camps, reading camps — all kinds of resources that dwarf any differences coming from $500 checks.

More important than parental money going into a school is parental involvement. The best indicator of school quality is the car count at parent-teacher night. Denying these parents the right to save teacher jobs at their schools seems absurd.

Poorer schools also benefit from Title1 money that flows in from the federal government.

"Title1 was meant to bring parity," says Orange schools Superintendent Ron Blocker. "Years ago I can remember we had more technology resources in the inner-city schools."

You see how a simple request from Honohan can get quite complicated once enough people mine it for unintended consequences, real or imagined. And this doesn't even get into the issue of naming rights for big contributors, which opens another can of worms.


Blocker defends request
But don't look for Blocker to give Honohan a detention. Honohan put a public face on the plight of public schools. Of all the voices in Tallahassee shouting over the butchering of public schools, it was his voice that resonated with the public.

"His back was against the wall," says Blocker. "Why did it even get to this? This poor guy has to worry about raising money instead of raising test scores."

And so Honohan's idea is being vetted. Perhaps if parents want to fill a funding void, Blocker says, some portion of their generosity can be passed on to poorer schools.

"If we are crying for help and people want to help," he says, "it's hard to say no to that."

So let's figure out a way to say yes.
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