GroupsThat Support Schools Doubt They Can Raise The Same Amount Of Money Without SuchPromotions.
By
JENNIFER LEVITZ
Journal Staff Writer
Wickford Elementary School sends students home with order forms for Yankeecandles. The school's parent-teacher group gets a cut of every sale and raises$2,000 to teach everything from origami to pumpkin painting.
Warwick's Norwood Elementary School holds a school assembly to rev upyoungsters for a catalog sale that offers gift wrap and candles. Pupils thentake the promotional packets home. The pitch raises $6,000 for cultural arts.
The fundraisers are a way for cash-starved schools to raise discretionarymoney, and are widespread across the state. They bring Oliver Twist to theauditorium and new swingsets to the playground.
But guess what? In Rhode Island, these fundraisers are illegal.
Public schools statewide have been unwittingly breaking a 1922 state law thatprohibits schools from sending advertising or promotional materials home withstudents.
And later this week, a legal counsel to Peter McWalters, the state'scommissioner for elementary and secondary education, plans to tell superintendentsthat however altruistic, these money-making promotions must stop.
Hit by questions from principals, the commissioner's legal department willissue another advisory saying that the law applies to every fundraiser thatsends students home with promotional or advertising materials.
``The law is clear on this, but I'm surprised as to what extent the practicehas crept back into schools,'' said Forrest Avila, legal counsel to McWalters.
PARENT-TEACHER ORGANIZATIONS call this a serious blow, because schools rely onfundraisers to boost budgets.
``I think the state is being a little ridiculous and unless they want to giveeach school the $10,000 that PTOs raise, they should reconsider,'' said TerriOhs, chairwoman of Wickford Elementary School, which bought staging, playgroundequipment, a bike rack, and books for the school.
The 1922 law was drafted partly by Charles Carroll, a former assistantcommissioner of education and author of the 1918 book Public Education in RhodeIsland .
The law came about after the Rhode Island Association of Superintendents ofPublic Schools adopted a resolution stating that ``the tendency to promotevarious activities through the public schools has become excessive, and if notchecked and regulated will seriously interfere with the progress of pupils.''
Carroll explained that ``public schools are not fair field in which to solicitmoney, services, gifts, promises, etc.''
The law forbids the ``distribution through or in the public schools or tochildren on the way to or from any school any circular, sample, package,coupon, ticket or other similar advertising matter.''
But the law doesn't ban all school fundraising, only that which involves usingschoolchildren as a conduit to sell a product, Avila said.
Students can, for example, solicit pledges for a charity read-a-thon becausethat doesn't involve a particular product, he said.
And schools can allow children to make donations for ``some proper purpose,''such as a canned food drive, Avila said.
The law also allows parent-teacher groups and booster clubs to hold fundraisersoutside of instructional time and ``under their own auspices,'' Avila said. Soas long as the groups don't organize the promotions ``through'' school -- usingstudents to carry order forms, for example, -- they're okay, he said.
A PTA could also hold, say, an after-school bake sale, as long as the groupdoesn't promote the event through schoolchildren, Avila said.
Avila will send out a memo explaining the law, he said.
``You always knew that there would be odds-and-ends activities out there,''Avila said, ``but it's more extensive than we realized.''
``Extensive'' is the right word.
``They refer to this 1922 law, but I chuckle to myself because everyfundraising program going does it this way,'' said Timothy Sullivan, publisherof the national magazine PTO Today, based in Franklin, Mass. ``Every state inthe country allows it; Rhode Island allows it de facto.''
Peter Worthington, president of Worthington Industries, a Cranston-basedcompany that runs catalog-sale fundraisers agreed, saying ``most every schoolin this state right now is in the process of selling some company's candy baror product.''
Norwood Elementary School has a Worthington fundraiser every September. Acompany representative speaks at a school assembly. Students take catalogshome.
About 35 percent of families participate, raising $6,000 in two weeks, saidMary Brown, of the school's PTA.
A ``solid'' parent-teacher organization could still raise money withoutcommercial products, Brown said, but it would be tough. The Norwood PTA'smonthly bake sales bring in $90, she said. Weekly popcorn sales net $60.
``We could bang our heads together and come up with something, but not thosekinds of funds that we make from the catalog sales,'' Brown said. ``Not achance. You might be able to do half that in one year.''
Jennifer Tausek, of the North Kingstown High School PTO, said there ``has to bea line'' setting limits on fundraisers. But the state should consider thatparent groups are ``having to foot bills for things that were taken care ofbefore,'' she said.
``I don't know what the solution is, but I don't think you should cut the childout of it completely,'' she said.
RHODE ISLAND is rare in addressing fundraising at the school level, saidKathy Christie, policy analyst for the Education Commission of the States, aColorado-based research organization.
``Some states deal with the issue of using kids as consumers,'' Christie said.``But not being able to use students as a means to reach the parents is alittle further than that.''
After McWalters's advisory last week on the 1922 law, several principals calledthe state.
``They seemed relieved,'' Avila said. ``They felt they were losing money-makingopportunities, and that they enjoyed being business people in a way, but thatit wasn't really their function.''
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