School fundraisers might be making education less equitable: research

Those brownies at your local school fundraiser might be feeding more than hunger; they may also be feeding systemic inequity. 

“School communities shouldn’t fundraise for core materials connected to the curriculum,” said Annie Kidder, executive director of People for Education, an organization dedicated to publicly funded education.

“We really should be concerned about how this exacerbates a disadvantage that already exists.”

Research shows that parental fundraising efforts, however well-intentioned, can compound disadvantages faced by students, particularly those in racialized neighbourhoods and less affluent communities.

This fall, the superintendent of the Winnipeg School Division asked principals to pause school fundraisers, telling CBC Manitoba he wants people “to think deeply about how we create equitable opportunities across the division.” 

Reaction was mixed, with some parents noting their children’s access to items like computers and tablets would be comprised without additional resources.

The Winnipeg School Division is the largest in Manitoba, and oversees schools in the city’s poorest neighbourhoods.

School fundraising decreased during the peak years of the COVID-19 pandemic, but anecdotal evidence suggests the practice is now on the upswing. 

Data collected by People for Education also found that, even in the lowest fundraising school year of the last decade, 2022- 23, income disparity was equivalently reflected in fundraising outcomes, with high-income schools raising almost three times as much as schools designated as low-income.

In 2017, the ten per cent of Ontario schools with the highest parental income levels raised 49 times what was raised by the ten per cent of schools with the lowest parental income levels. 

More than half a billion dollars in additional funding was generated in the province by school fundraisers that year.

The following year, the top 5 per cent of Ontario secondary schools raised as much as the bottom 81 per cent combined, with some schools reportedly bringing in more than $150,000 in extra revenue.

Monique Deveaux, Canada Research Chair in Ethics and Global Social Change at the University of Guelph, said students from wealthy families are also more likely to have access to resources outside of the public school system that can compensate for limited public funding and the ability to exit the public system and pay for private education.

“We’ve had a massive increase in income inequality over the last 20 to 30 years. It just keeps getting bigger,” said Deveaux.

“If schools are not well funded and don’t have enough to fund the programs that they want and have the facilities they want, then the inequalities in parental incomes and the advantages that come with that will pass onto their kids in a variety of ways; it’s not just fundraising, but fundraising is part of it.”

Neoliberal values and “good parents”

Sue Winton, a professor with York University’s Faculty of Education, argues that fundraising is deeply tied to neoliberal expectations of what makes a “good parent.” 

That makes reining in parental fundraising challenging, even when schools are adequately funded.

“In the past year, my children have come home from school with requests to pay for pizza lunches, ski trips, drama performances, and much, much more,” she wrote in a recent academic paper.

“As a parent, I want my children to participate in these activities, but as a critical policy researcher, I am keenly aware of fundraising critics’ argument that school fundraising efforts reproduce inequities between schools and communities.”

Ultimately, school boards with policies encouraging parent fundraising enable some students, predominantly those attending schools in affluent neighbourhoods, to enjoy materials and opportunities not available to other students, she said.

Deveaux said parents often express concern that ending fundraising will result in a “levelling down” phenomenon.

“This concept of levelling down is a shorthand in philosophical debates about equality,” she said. 

“You don’t want to have to kneecap people in order to have fairness … because if the goal is to have people flourish and have access to equal opportunities, then you shouldn’t have to take away some people’s opportunities in order to have equal opportunities.”

Reframe to find solutions

One solution is to reframe the discussion around school fundraising, focusing on justice and collective prosperity, Deveaux said.

“If you engage people in a conversation about what they think a fair society looks like, it takes longer than just fighting over whether we should be able to fundraise or not,” she said.

This type of conversation can lead to a discussion not about levelling down but about raising all students. 

Kidder said there also needs to be a broader debate about what constitutes essential or basic needs in the education system.

“In some provinces, you have parents fundraising for whole additions on school buildings,” she said. 

“And that definitely creates concerns about inequity, but where to draw the line is a hard question to answer.”

Ontario, for example, doesn’t allow school communities to fundraise for core materials connected to the curriculum, Kidder said. But what constitutes core materials has been left largely undefined.

“So, are iPads core materials? Are art supplies core materials? Or field trips, school grounds, sports facilities, or the equipment in an auditorium or a gym? That line is not clear at all because, because what nobody has really done in Canada is say, these are the things that should be there in all school … this is what’s essential to provide every child with a good high-quality education,” Kidder said. 

“I think a lot of us would call those essential components of equality education.”

She said many of the skills students need to succeed in the workplace and society generally don’t come from the classroom. They’re developed by participating in a sports team, drama production, or club, extracurriculars that often depend, at least in part, on community fundraising.

“That’s where you’re learning how to work with other people, learning how to practice, learning how to deal with failing or being really nervous, all those life skills you really need,” Kidder said.

Chicken or egg

She also warns that fundraising can create a cyclical problem where communities fundraise to cover shortfalls in provincial funding, and then the government provides less funding because schools are fundraising, she said.

“Governments end up assuming that the so-called extras will be there and be paid for by families.”

In some cases, Kidder said governments end up providing schools in lower-income neighbourhoods with more funding, which might help them provide more programming and amenities in the short term but ultimately entrenches the role of private money in education.

“And that flies in the face of the whole idea of public education in terms of it being publicly funded, free and equitable for all students,” she said.