Donation statistics presented to a special committee this month by Shawnee Mission School District administrators showed a lopsided giving advantage when it comes to the district’s wealthiest schools.
But whether that disparity is resulting in more staff positions or better educational outcomes for those schools gifted more money wasn’t clear.
It’s also not immediately clear if the district plans to do anything to address the gaps among schools.
Where is the money going?
Over the previous three school years, about 80% of donations dedicated to a particular school — funds brought in through traditional PTA fundraisers, as well as more direct gifts like checks written by parents and grandparents — went to schools with less than 20% of students on free or reduced lunch, according to administrators.
That is nearly $2.4 million going to 16 schools
By comparison, 31 other schools in the district that have 20% or more of their students on free or reduced lunch received just shy of $550,000 combined.
The differences grow more stark when broken down by feeder pattern.
Schools in the Shawnee Mission East feeder pattern led donation totals by a wide margin, receiving $2.15 million overall.
That’s more than twice the district’s four other high school feeder patterns combined.
SM North’s feeder pattern was a distant second with $250,000 in donations, followed by SM Northwest with $195,000, SM South with $149,000 and SM West with $110,000.
Committee of three board members has studied the issue
A special task force of three school board members has been studying donation patterns this summer in an attempt to find out if inequality in donations is resulting in some schools having educational advantages over others.
In particular, committee members Jessica Hembree, David Westbrook and Jamie Borgman have been focusing on the practice of raising funds and accepting donation checks to pay for staff positions in a designated school.
While the statistics the committee gathered showed clearly that the bulk of donations are going to more well-off schools, committee members ended the meeting Friday with questions on the actual effect those extra funds are having.
They also left unanswered what the district could do about the disparities in donations without squelching the passion of schools’ PTAs or families who hold bake sales and write checks.
“It’s very difficult for us to dampen the enthusiasm our community has for supporting the schools and expressing that enthusiasm through writing a check to fund a position,” Westbrook said.
A wide variance between schools
Not all of the donations coming in are dedicated to particular schools, but about two-thirds are, according to the statistics gathered by the committee over the past few months.
Over the past three years, donations for each of the district’s schools averaged out to $62,541 per school, but the actual amounts varied widely.
The top five schools in terms of donations received were all in the SM East feeder pattern, including:
- Shawnee Mission East High School itself, which received $610,424,
- Westwood View Elementary, with $528,738,
- Briarwood Elementary with $302,364,
- Prairie Elementary with $286,461
- Corinth Elementary with $192,533.
Other schools’ donation totals can pale in comparison.
The school with the lowest amount of donations over the past three years, according to the committee, was Ray Marsh Elementary in Shawnee in the SM Northwest feeder pattern, which received a total of $300 in dedicated outside donations over that period.
Other schools with some of the lowest donation totals include Sunflower Elementary with $1,500, John Diemer Elementary with $2,000, Santa Fe Trail Elementary with $2,134 and Rushton Elementary with $2,475.
'Community-funded' staff positions
One of the key areas of focus was the use of outside donations to pay staff positions.
Statistics sought out by the task force showed that staff positions added by outside donations and fundraising over the previous two years went overwhelmingly to the better-off schools.
Some 97% of such funds went to schools with less than 20% of students on free or reduced lunch.
However, district administrators also presented the factors and formulas they use to decide how many staff members each school gets.
Superintendent Michael Schumacher told the committee that administrators look at the needs of each building, a school’s projected enrollment, the students’ needs and wishes and the requirements for at-risk students.
Schools that qualify for federal Title I designation — meaning they serve more low-income families — also have requirements, he said. All that is further complicated by staff turnover.
Kent Glazer, director of athletics and student activities, also presented the matrix he uses to determine how many coaches and assistant coaches are needed for each school.
“From a coaching standpoint you should not have booster club fundraising paying a coach,” he said.
The majority of such community-funded positions are classroom aides and interventionists.
Schumacher said the number of community-funded positions districtwide should decrease in the coming school year, from 11.6 full-time equivalent employees this year to 6.5. That may be due to an increase in hiring, he said.
Board members’ thoughts
Hembree and Westbrook, the committee members present on Friday, were left to discuss whether the district’s staffing procedure prevented schools with higher donation amounts from getting an unfair staffing advantage.
Both said the district’s staffing policies appear to be thorough.
“What I heard today is that we are rigorous about defining standards that must be met to have equal educational opportunities for students,” Westbrook said.
He added that the issue may be “more a matter of perception than practice.”
Hembree agreed that policies are rigorous, but she said that could fall away when the district accepts community-funded positions.
“That part gives me a little bit of pause. I think the data bears out that there are haves and have-nots,” she said. “But maybe it’s not as big a problem as I think.”
Hembree said she was encouraged by the fact that the number of community-funded positions has decreased.
“It seems like the need for some of these community-funded positions should be going down, and that feels like an opportunity in some ways to decide if this is a thing we want to continue,” she said.
She added that since the special committee began studying donations, she’s heard from a librarian who said “he couldn’t believe how many more resources are available to him,” after he moved to a less-needy school.
She also said she is concerned for some schools in the middle that do not receive federal Title I funds but yet don’t have the fundraising ability to match the wealthier schools.
What happens next?
Both Hembree and Westbrook agreed that the district should keep an eye on donation trends, but more study will be needed on what steps, if any, the district should take to prevent educational disparity.
The next meeting of the special donations committee is set for Friday, Aug. 9, at 1 p.m. at the Shawnee Mission Center for Academic Achievement, 8200 W. 71st St., in Overland Park.
This story was originally published by the Johnson County Post.
