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Illinois School Board Journal
July/August 2001

Bringing in more than bake sales

By Linda Dawson

For many school districts, making budget dollars stretch to cover the basics is a challenge. Because revenue streams from property taxes and state funding have their limits, it becomes important for school boards and administrators to look "outside the box" for ways to bolster budgets and even provide some "extras."

According to David Turner, executive director of the Illinois Principals Association, one of the skills of a top-notch administrator is being able to develop outside resources. Some, such as fund-raisers and vending machines, are obvious.

"Those are nice little pieces of revenue," Turner said, "but good principals go beyond that. They form alliances with businesses in the community and the region."

Successful alliances are built when both the students and the businesses derive benefits.

Some schools have developed hardware and/or software agreements with local businesses, Turner said. An architectural firm might reassign its software license to a computerized drafting program after an update. The business may get more of a tax write-off by donating the program to the school than it would on trade-in. And students stay one step behind cutting edge technology, better able to step into college-level training or job placement.

The same is true, he said, with donating vehicles to an auto-mechanics class. The donor can write the book value off for tax purposes; the students get a car to rework and then resell as a profit back to the shop.

"If you really start to look at your business community," Turner said, "you can do that with anything."

He advises principals to look beyond the tangible assets that can be exchanged and at the human resources as well. "Time and expertise can be worth a fortune," Turner said, in terms of bringing speakers into a classroom (maybe a dermatologist who comes to talk about acne) or taking students into the workplace to job-shadow. And never overlook outright cash donations.

"Talk to people in the community," he said. "You'd be surprised at what people are willing to give. You just have to have a little imagination."

Parent organizations, booster clubs and the newest trend, school foundations, also work hard to buy things for specific groups, according to Larry Frank, research computer specialist with the Illinois Education Association. As a former school band director, he knows the importance of finding a way to pay for expensive trips and instruments.

Such groups can fund relatively small purchases, like trophies and medals for awards programs, or large projects like new playground equipment, trips to Europe or, as in the case of Galesburg Community Unit School District 205's foundation, a $2 million auxiliary gymnasium and later a weight room.

But when it comes to filling in gaps in the classroom, teachers themselves provide a lot. It's not unusual, Frank said, for teachers to spend $500 or $600 a year for supplemental books, artwork and project supplies for their classroom.

Frank's estimates come from his own classroom experience, as well as from his wife, who also teaches. His amount is substantially the same as one quoted by Oklahoma Observer columnist Frosty Troy, who wrote that public school teachers spend $468 per year on classrooms.

"Without more money in the system," Frank said, "you can't get away from teachers buying things." He also says there could be an inverse proportion to district size: teachers in smaller districts may be spending more per year than teachers in larger, sometimes wealthier districts.

In addition to recent book purchases for her classroom, he said, his wife has been known to snag unwanted furniture to develop a comfy reading area, bring in partition screens for display boards and supply cut flowers for science projects.

Most teachers spend their own money on classrooms and don't think anything of it, Frank said. But when they're unhappy about other issues or work conditions, "they blame the board for not having enough money."

When the board is governing correctly, Frank said, attending to policy and not micromanaging finances, school board members may not even be aware of how much out-of-pocket expense teachers incur. He encourages finding ways for teachers, principals and school boards to communicate about these issues before resentment builds.

The bottom line, however, is that with the way schools are funded, teachers, parent groups and the community will continue to find themselves digging into their pockets to pay for items the official school budget doesn't cover.