By KYLE SPENCER, NEW YORK TIMES | http://nyti.ms/wICDnN
Dave Sanders for The New York Times - FUND-RAISING At Public School 295 in Brooklyn, bake sales raise money for good causes. But they can also cause tension between affluent and less-well-off parents.
Published: March 16, 2012 :: THE CUPCAKE WARS came to Public School 295 in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, in October.
The Parent-Teacher Association’s* decision to raise the price of a cupcake at its monthly bake sale — to $1, from 50 cents — was supposed to be a simple way to raise extra money in the face of city budget cuts.
Instead, in a neighborhood whose median household income leaped to $60,184 in 2010 from $34,878 a decade before, the change generated unexpected ire, pitting cash-short parents against volunteer bakers, and dividing a flummoxed PTA* executive board, where wealthier newcomers to the school serve alongside poorer immigrants who have called the area home for years.
|
Tell Us How Much You Spent »
“A lot of people felt like they really needed to be heard on this,” recalled Dan Janzen, a mild-mannered freelance copywriter with children in first and third grades who leads the school’s development committee and devised the price increase.
One mother expressed dismay at being blindsided, while others said they were worried about those at the school without a dollar to spare. Ultimately, the PTA meeting at which the issue came to a head was adjourned without a resolution.
Such fracases are increasingly common at schools like P.S. 295, where changing demographics can cause culture clashes. PTA leaders are often caught between trying to get as much as possible from parents of means without alienating lower-income families.
Sometimes, the battles are over who should lead the PTA itself: many of the gentrifiers bring professional skills and different ideas of how to get things done, while those who improved the school enough to attract them become guardians of its traditions.
So along with cross-cultural exchanges, international festivals and smorgasbords, school diversity can mean raw feelings about race and class bubbling to the surface.
“It’s never just about the cupcake,” said Jeffrey Henig, a professor of political science and education at Teachers College, who has written extensively about this topic. “The cupcake is the spark.”
Of course it is not always a cupcake. At Public School 11 in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn, there has been discord over the annual auction, which last year drew more than $10,000.
P.S. 11, which once had trouble attracting students, has gained popularity in the past few years, drawing the children of owners of new condominiums and beloved brownstones in nearby Fort Greene and Prospect Heights.
The share of students at the school who qualify for a free or reduced-price lunch — meaning their family income falls below a certain level — has dropped to 67 percent today, from 86 percent in 2005.
During the planning of the auction, there were accusations of elitism, racism and defeatism, as newcomers and longtime residents debated whether to host a laid-back affair with all-you-can-drink rum punch or something more elegant, featuring donated bottles of wine.
Should auction items be posted online to build excitement even though many families do not have computers at home? A seeming compromise, to offer all-you-can-eat passes for $35 along with $25 tickets that exclude food, only generated more controversy last time around when some people who had bought the lower-priced tickets ate anyway.
“There has been so much distrust and resentment,” said Eva Marie Arena, who has two children at the school and recently stepped down as chairwoman of the fund-raising committee, citing burnout as one of the reasons. “There is this idea that we have come into this place that has been one way for so long, and we are bringing with us all our fancy ideas.”
At Public School 110 on the Lower East Side, where the number of children who qualify for a free or reduced-price lunch has dropped to 65 percent today from 86 percent in 2005, conversation has focused on whether or not the annual spring fair — which features face-painting and craft projects — should be mostly free or more of a fund-raiser.
And at the East Village Community School, which serves the children of architects and artists as well as those of housekeepers and handymen, a brouhaha broke out after the Parent Association sent a second “ask” letter in December — in previous years there had only been one — noting that it had met its $20,000 goal but had set a new one.
The letter said 27 percent of families had given money, admonishing, “We can do better,” which led to a backlash, especially since the push came at the same time as other fund-raising initiatives: a holiday book sale and a $20 parents’ night out.
“It’s a tricky thing,” acknowledged Patricia Davies, a nonprofit management consultant who helped write the controversial letter. “It’s fund-raising. So you want to be aggressive. But this is also a public school.”
In Harlem, century-old brownstones and gleaming high rises have lured a growing pool of middle-class families to P.S./I.S. 180, where a handful of students privately confessed to the PTA president, Carmen Reyes, that their families could not afford the $20 bracelet that provided access to all the games and food at the popular fall fund-raising fair. So Ms. Reyes proposed that they help decorate in exchange for entry bracelets, which she said pleased the students.
Carrie Reynolds, a former book editor who is a co-president of the PTA at P.S. 163 on West 97th Street, said she worked hard to fight off the impression that PTA-sponsored events are designed for “rich people.” That can be a challenge at a school where 56 percent of the students receive free or reduced-price lunches (down from 68 percent in 2005) and tickets to the Winter Gala run $65.
Recent auction items — including a backstage tour of the Metropolitan Opera and a weekend getaway in the country — have gone for hundreds, and sometimes thousands, of dollars (though at fancier schools, five figures for featured items can be the norm).
To balance this, P.S. 163 also hosts informal events, like its International Celebration in March, where families bring in homemade empanadas, shrimp fried rice, and deep dish lasagna, which are displayed in the cafeteria along with flags and sometimes traditional garb from their countries of origin. The school begins the year with a series of free gatherings — a welcome breakfast and a Saturday play date in the schoolyard — before asking anyone for money. And the PTA also organizes a shadow online auction around the time of the gala that features things like $25 restaurant coupons.
Some other PTAs, including those at P.S. 261 in Boerum Hill, Brooklyn, and P.S. 11 in Chelsea, are trying to emulate professional fund-raising outfits, by quietly reaching out to the splattering of bankers and small business owners for large donations, while largely bypassing those who have less. This, of course, has managed to offend people on both sides.
At P.S. 295 in Sunset Park, efforts to bridge gaps both economic and ethnic are pronounced. The PTA requires that posters advertising fund-raisers and other events include English and Spanish, and members often brainstorm about how to engage parents with limited resources, contemplating everything from the bus fare to the cost of feeding a large family. For the Spring Arts Festival and the Harvest Festival, $2 worth of tickets are tucked into every student’s backpack, enough to buy a meal.
But some of the wealthier parents were disappointed that one of their lower-cost events, a $5 winter concert series titled Beat the Blahs, drew a meager crowd to hear Cumbiagra, a local band that plays music from Colombia’s coastal region. Estela Bernabe, who has a fourth grader at the school and sometimes clocks 12-hour shifts as a baby sitter, said she thought she spoke for many in saying her absence was not politically charged. “I’m working,” she explained. “I just don’t have the time.”
A truce of sorts, meanwhile, has been called in the cupcake wars. The price is still $1, but two words have been added to the regular notice in the school bulletin: “Suggested donation.”
No comments:
Post a Comment