Alameda Education Foundation

AEF and Measure H: What’s the Relationship?

A number of people are confused about the relationship between AEF and Keep Alameda Schools Excellent  (the parcel tax campaign). Here’s how the two organizations work together.

The Alameda Education Foundation (AEF) is a non-profit, community-based organization that raises and distributes money and other resources to the public schools in the Alameda Unified School District (AUSD). We are not the sponsoring body for Measure H (although we do support the parcel tax and believe it is needed in Alameda to stave off the current set of budget reductions our schools are facing).

AEF is running the “Step Up” effort, which is a public awareness campaign aimed at educating Alamedans about what they will lose under the Governor’s proposed budget. The campaign’s mottos is: “Public education is too valuable to throw away.”

Keep Alameda Schools Excellent (KASE) is the political action committee running the parcel tax campaign. AUSD’s Board of Education voted to put that parcel tax on the June 3^rd ballot.

So that’s two separate campaigns running simultaneously in Alameda. Both are crucial. But they are not the same thing.

Read on to learn more about the relationship between the two efforts — and what an education foundation can do for our community.

Why do we need a parcel tax in Alameda?

The parcel tax is vital to the survival of our local schools. The AUSD is facing a $4.5 million reduction in the coming year. Our schools cannot withstand those cuts without significant losses to programs and personnel. We are facing cuts to high school sports, elementary school music, and middle school counselors, as well as school closures and the loss of all class-size reduction

Alameda must pass Measure H if it wishes to weather these cuts. The parcel tax will generate approximately $3.9 - $4.2 million and it buys Alameda the time it needs to figure out how it is going to restructure its schools over the longer term. Without this parcel tax, we are facing significant changes to how we go about educating our children – In a perhaps more frightening scenario, we face state take-over if we are unable to get ourselves out of this budget crisis in the next two years.

The Alameda Education Foundation wants the district to maintain local control of our schools. Measure H will allow us to keep that control out of state hands, which will allow us to create our own options moving forward.

Why do we need both a parcel tax and the AEF awareness campaign?

There are a few reasons.

First: We think it’s really, really important that Alamedans become aware of what’s currently at stake with the Governor’s budget.

Alameda has withstood $7.7 million in budget reductions over the course of seven years. For the most part, those cuts have been kept away from the classrooms. Now, with cuts totaling $4.5 million in one year’s time, the programs being cut hit home.

It is a fundamental responsibility of the AEF to alert Alameda to this situation, and to put a “face” on what we stand to lose as a community. When our schools lose funding, Alameda loses real coaches, real teachers and staff, and our children lose real opportunities for their futures. AEF’s “Step Up” public awareness campaign is meant to bring the issue of school funding to the public arena so Alameda can begin to have constructive discussions about how to increase revenue in the AUSD.

Second: Even if the parcel tax gets passed, we need to have a healthy education foundation to fund innovative programs. Eventually, in fact, our vision is that the AEF will fundraise so efficiently that the district will be able to concentrate on what districts do well (e.g., choosing curriculum, managing teachers and staff, making sure all standards are met, and providing special education services). AEF, then, would be able to bring significant support to elements of “whole child” education.

As such, we have identified six main targets for our fundraising: the arts; athletics; teacher support; after school enrichment; going green district wide and innovations in technology in the classroom.

Third: It’s possible that despite the severity of this year’s cuts, we’ll see still more state budget cuts over the next four or five years. After the passing of Proposition 13 in 1978, the funding for schools changed drastically. A full two-thirds of the budgets of our state’s public schools are dependant upon the state’s own fiscal health. As we have seen, that is a precarious position to be in around something as vital as Alameda’s children.

As we face continued budget uncertainties, we’ll need a strong foundation to help the district maintain its programs.

Think of it as a rainy day fund that will allow our schools to continue to offer high-quality education to our children – despite what happens at the state level.

Why can’t we just raise money via the school PTA’s?

The AEF strongly encourages parents to participate in their schools’ PTA’s, both financially and with volunteer hours. PTA’s are a vital part of the “educational ecology” in Alameda, and they serve an important role in our community.

However, PTA’s aren’t really set up to raise and distribute millions of dollars. Moreover, PTA’s generally focus on their own sites in terms of fundraising. If we leave fundraising to individual sites, there’s a risk that some schools will end up with collecting money to support, say, music or sports, while others may not participate at all. This creates huge equity issues across the district, both in terms of programs offered and access to those programs.

AEF thoroughly supports parents’ contributions to their PTA’s. But because AEF is committed to distributing the funds it raises in an equitable manner – and because we have the legal and financial structures in place to handle large amounts of money – we believe the foundation is the best organization for raising funds for district-wide programs.

Doesn’t AEF skim a large percentage off of every donation?

No. A small percentage of enrichment class tuitions is used to pay for insurance, administration of the funds, and a part-time staff person who organizes the program. And yes, a small percentage of program donations goes to pay for our professional staff and some expenses associated with administering our funds and raising more funds. Running a foundation whose mandate is to raise money for the schools, in other words, does take some money.

A general rule of thumb for the charitable organizations is to keep that percentage at less than 20%, with a goal of keeping it less than 10%. Ours is under 10%.

In short, our commitment is to 10,000 students in Alameda. Everything we do is meant to support their educational experiences.

Why don’t you just use volunteers?

Volunteers don’t have the time, the energy, or the expertise to successfully run a professional non-profit organization. Nor can they provide the kind of stability that philanthropic organizations seek when they’re looking for good candidates for grants.

Garnering the support of corporations, major donors and large grantors demands that we have a consistent, professional organization in place that works with best practice models. Bottom line, if we want to raise big amounts of money for our schools, we have to have a professional foundation in place to handle those funds.