Way Beyond Bake Sales: The $1 Million PTA

EACH fall, parents at the Anderson School, a highly regarded K-8 on the Upper West Side for gifted and talented students, receive letters from the PTA emblazoned with the school’s elegant “A” logo. Though Anderson indulges in the usual trappings of public-school fund-raising — bake sales, book fairs, auctions — this letter is blunter: It urges parents to simply write a check. And it suggests an amount: This school year, it was $1,300.

Ayda Gibson, 44, the mother of a first grader at the school, said she did not mind being asked.

“If they don’t ask,” she said, “they won’t get.”

Many parents, it would seem, agree with her. In the 2009-10 school year, Anderson’s PTA and a much smaller alumni group raised $1,001,302, putting the school in a remarkable category — the New York City public schools that raise amounts in the $1 million range annually.

full: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/03/nyregion/at-wealthy-schools-ptas-help-fill-budget-holes.html?pagewanted=all

This article stirred quite a discussion at the comments section. Under "reader picks" the most-liked comment was:

"The real issue is that ALL schools ought to have gardens, teacher assistants, science & technology teachers, art, music, foreign language, computers, sports, field trips."

The second-most popular comment (tagged with an NYT Pick icon):

"It's kind of fascinating that rich professionals are happy to write big checks to their children's schools--for improvements to benefit their children and their classmates--but don't like the idea of paying higher taxes, which also benefit their children and themselves (better infrastructure, better services, better healthcare, a more thriving nation), just a bit less directly. They'll proudly contribute to their neighborhood but not to their country. Maybe if higher taxation on the wealthy could be framed as a kind of charitable giving? Find some places to engrave the names of those whose taxes are helping to support the national "neighborhood"?"

Further down, this comment:

"Publicly subsidized effectively private schools should be illegal. Period.

Why? Because the wealthy have significant advantages (money, time, and superb educations being foremost) that become disconnected from the public good when these considerable resources are allowed to focus exclusively, with a public subsidy even, on their own children....

If you want to abandon the greater public system,by all means, go. But please, pay full fare and do not expect a public subsidy. It's not in the public interest."