the McGuinty government needs to stop buying off parents with their own tax dollars to be “engaged” with a system that 1) doens’t want them and 2) does little to encourage councils to move out of the fundraising box an on to other more meaningful education issues.

The Parent Reaching Out Grants is nothing more than an attempt to buy votes and silence from the very same parents who, when the PCs were in power claimed that spending money on parents and school councils was a waste of money, that in fact that money could be better used for students in classrooms.

Effective schools and their administrators don’t need grants to get parents engaged. Money can’t buy that.

Parents Reaching Out grants, do not do anything meaningful in student achievement, including literacy, at the school level. Where is the educator’s role?
.http://www.edu.gov.on.ca/eng/parents/guidelines.html

As I was surfing the Ontario government site, I came across this page, called, “Who’s responsible for your child’s education?”

http://www.edu.gov.on.ca/eng/document/brochure/whosresp.html#councils

No where, and I mean no where does it state who is responsible for a child who failed to learn the basics needed to navigate society. Apparently none of the arms of education are.

Updated version of school councils:

Role of School Councils

The school council regulation states that the purpose of school councils is, “through the active participation of parents, to improve pupil achievement and to enhance the accountability of the education system to parents.” According to the regulation, school boards are required to solicit the views of parent councils on the issues that relate to pupil achievement and accountability to parents, including:

•Conduct of persons in schools;
•A dress code for students;
•School improvement plans in response to EQAO testing;
•The process and criteria for the selection of principals and vice-principals;
•Policies regarding board funding of school councils;
•Fundraising activities of school councils;
•Conflict resolution procedures for school councils; and
•Policies regarding reimbursement of expenses incurred by school council members and officers.”

http://www.etfo.ca/IssuesinEducation/SchoolCouncils/Pages/default.aspx

I really do not know how accountability and student achievement fits in. It is now apparent that school councils is the means and the tool, to become the cheerleaders of the public school system, and their programs, and their secondary primary job, is to be another tool, to promote parental involvement in the schools.

I am just wondering how many school councils, have ever undertaken or had a meeting with parents who are trying to get services for their child. Or deal with the parent who has on going issues of bullying. I have not found anything, that they actually help parents to navigate the system, and to provide them with the knowledge. Or even have information available for parents whose children are experiencing reading problems, that have more to do with the reading curriculum, and teaching methods, than what a parent is doing at home?

Yeah, notasheep, you are right - the councils are nothing more than fund-raising machines.

In Peel, a regional Parent Reaching Out grant was used to inform parents how to help their students achieve in school.  The lead principal received the Premier’s Award for Excellence for the schools-based outreach.

Longtitudinal outcomes of the project address 2of8 indicators of the Poverty Reduction Strategy:
• year-over-year improvements to EQAO scores for two successive years and
• opportunity for secondary students to perform diploma-requisite community service hours to promote graduation rates.

Details can be found in the “Summary Attendance Results” document at http://wiki.theagenda.tvo.org/User:CitizenApprenticeship.

The change in PRO grant application deadline is problematic for an initializing sequel, ramped up project which would support parents and students in three identified priority neighbourhoods in Peel Region.  Parent Engagement Office was aware of this emerging dialog, as indicated in a September 2009 letter to me from Hon. Kathleen Wynne.

A properly constructed regional model could produce a data set to promote the universal idea for “Citizen Apprenticeship”, whereby students can build RESP values with qualified tutoring time inputs instead of money.  Rationale and clouds of pixiedust can be found in “Pro$perityInKnowledgeEconomy” at the same wiki site.

It doesn’t appear to me that PPM 150 actually prohibits pizza days. We have pizza day once per week; I’m not sure if it’s the student council or the parent council who organize it.  Proceeds fund field trips and other programs for students.  The pizzas come not from one of the brand-name pizzerias, but from a local family-owned catering service that provides halal meat and so forth.

If it is sold on school grounds to students, unless it is part of the 10 special-event days per year, it is not allowed. 

“The standards do not apply to food and beverages that are:

- offered in schools to students at no cost;
- brought from home or purchased off school premises and are not for resale in schools;
- available for purchase during field trips off school premises;
- fsold in schools for non-school purposes (e.g., sold by an outside organization that is using the gymnasium after school hours for a non-school–related event);
- sold for fundraising activities that occur off school premises;
- sold in staff rooms.

EXEMPTION FOR SPECIAL-EVENT DAYS

The school principal may designate up to ten days (or fewer, as determined by the school board) during the school year as special-event days on which food and beverages sold in schools would be exempt from the nutrition standards outlined in this memorandum. The school principal must consult with the school council prior to designating a day as a special-event day. School principals are encouraged to consult with their students in making these decisions.

Notwithstanding this exemption, on special-event days, schools are encouraged to sell food and beverages that meet the nutrition standards set out in this memorandum.”

“A properly constructed regional model could produce a data set to promote the universal idea for “Citizen Apprenticeship”, whereby students can build RESP values with qualified tutoring time inputs instead of money.  Rationale and clouds of pixiedust can be found in “Pro$perityInKnowledgeEconomy” at the same wiki site.”

In NL, they have the same type of model, where high school students, tutor for vouchers for university tuition. It has been operating for at least 10 years, and is funded by the provincial government. In the spring time, when the university students come home, we see some of them working side by side with the math teachers, tutoring students for the final exams. They too, will received a voucher, for university tuition.

The model is not based on the Citizenship Apprentice, I believe it has the same effect, to incentivize social engagement of youth in public school-based programs.

.

Where does it specifically forbid pizza? I looked but didn’t see it. It’s possible to make pizza with fairly nutritious ingredients.

PPM mentions pizza as a possibly Ok food as long as it meets the criteria for fat content and other nutrient criteria.  You’re right that pizza can be healthy, but now it will have face the content requirements—no fatty meats, higher fat cheese, oily sauces etc.

My point was that the memorandum is another in a list of no-no’s that the government is setting out in the nanny state of Ontario.  Schools and parents can’t possibly feed their own kids properly.  It doesn’t stop high school kids from walking to the local plaza and buying whatever junk they want.

It is a policy that becomes ridiculous if it means a principal has to ask the board for a special day to hold a bake sale so kids can have some fun and raise some money, if they like.

Bake sales were quite popular in the 80s, with my oldest child, who attended a Catholic school. Parents who worked full time, paid $10 monthly or so. Than the parent organization, went to work to ferret out the parents who could bake. Even back than, there was few parents who could really whipped up a pie, cookies, or a cake up in scratch. The bake sales were legendary, and where everybody and their neighbour went to the bake sale, for some old-fashioned bake goodies. When the bales sales were held, the local bakery, their sales were down quite a bit. For parents who paid the $10 monthly, there was no $10 paid out when one baked for the sale.

Today, bake sales, as I have observed, few baked goodies are actually home made. But I bet, bake sales could be very popular community events, if the school council and the school, ferret out the parents who can bake goodies. Bring some honest to goodness old fashioned bake goodies into the schools.

As for the food being supplied at the schools, especially at the high school level, it is indeed a very poor fare, even if it is now healthy. What ever happen to the high school cafeteria that operated as a non-profit. When it was meat loaf day, the line up snaked all the way to the upstairs steps. And it was very good. All for 75 cents, including milk. There was a full meal, including dessert.  The cooks, made a real neat cookie, made with dates, figs, nuts, oatmeal, and it was usually 5 inches in diameter or more. That little number cost 5 cents, and within a year it increase to 10 cents, because of its popularity. They made the cookie for students who would not normally sit down and eat lunch. They did buy the cookie, plus everyone else brought the cookie. Jello desserts, custards just sat there, and as a result they made less of the other desserts.

If a student was skipping class, one had to be careful because most of the teachers also went down to eat in the cafeteria. The food was that good. There was no need for anyone to go across the street to the drug store, and buy junk food. We could buy the same junk food, cheaper in the cafeteria. If a student did not have the money, often their were recruited for 10 minutes or so to attend to the cash, or dish duty. Nobody went hungry, not if the chief cook, could help it. She was like having a second mother.

Food was brought through a wholesaler, via the grocery stores. Business association, donated monies for the purchase of food, and a lot of free donations came their way as well.

I guess home-made canned peaches would not make the school menu today?  Food quality went down the drain, when the public schools decided to centralized and standardized the food menu, no matter where one lives. Up the prices, to where it is cheaper to go to the fast food places, or make the effort to go home.  Or even brown-bagged it.

If you actually believe in parent power or strong parent advocacy, you ought to favor banning fund-raising at schools.

1) it polarizes the haves from the have-nots.
2) it lets the gov’t off the hook for proper funding
3) it diverts parents attention from the program of the school. It sucks up all the air in the room so substantial questions fall off the agenda.

The polarization of haves vs. have-nots is very real.  At a previous school in an extremely deprived area, the parents, teachers and students worked their {bleeps} off on fundraising all year. Our grand total was $790.00—not even enough to fund one field trip.  AT the same time, our VP lived in a posh North Toronto neighbourhood, and told us how she dropped in on the local school’s Fun Fair on a Saturday morning in spring. She reported that BigBucks P.S. raised approximately $7000.00 per hour at their fundraising events.

At a PD session I was partnered with a teacher from a different public school in the same North Toronto neighbourhood. She reported that the school raised so much money they invested it in GICs.  One time she reported a damaged chair in her classroom, and came in the next Monday to find that all the tables and chairs in the room had been replaced with new ones.  If she wanted a novel set for her class, the books were on her desk the next day.  At the time, if I wanted a class set of books, I had to purchase them myself (I found Ebay a great source) Where she had a virtually unlimited budget for classroom necessities, at my school it was $50 per year for everything. That didn’t even cover pencils and erasers.

A colleague from a wealthy school in a different board told me one year their EQAO math scores went down, and the parent council asked what the teachers needed to improve math results. Teachers asked for more math manipulative materials. A parent came forward and donated $1000 per classroom for this purpose—in a 40-classroom school.  That one donation was more than our entire school budget for the year.

The polarities between the rich and poor schools are real and not easily solved. If parent donations and fundraising in the well-to-do areas were not permitted, more of those parents would abandon the public school system, so these differences have to be allowed (I heard Doug’s friend George Martel make this point in a public forum). On the other hand, the funds typically respond to public pressure, and the middle-class schools are better organized and more politically active, so the low-income areas get hit with a double whammy. They can’t raise the funds themselves, and they are short-changed because they lack political influence.

Teachers in the latter situations need to buy or make most of the materials they need to “deliver the curriculum.”  Instead of pay incentives for teachers in such situations, I think a good idea would be to make an expense allowance of up to $10 000 per year available to such teachers as showed good results with their students.  This would not be personal income (which would mostly be taxed away) but a grant to purchase supplies, materials or events (such as a guest artist) for students.  This could motivate more of the best teachers to stay in low-income schools; as it is, I’ve known quite a few good ones move to better areas because, as they had children of their own and more responsibilities, they could no longer afford to subsidize the system to the tune of $1000-$5000 per year of after-tax income.

May be very true, inside the cities, but as one moves away from the cities, it changes, to where there is issues, that are not issues in the cities. There is a host of variables that are influencing a school, and its population.

I blame this on the funding formulas, and how it takes away operating decisions on resources away from the local school. Might be fine for a national chain that have stores across the country, but for the operation of schools, it causes problems because there is no way of predicting the resources needed from year to year, or even 5 years from now. The student population changes from year to year, as well as the teacher population and other influences outside of the school walls, such as economic influences, There is a host of factors, too many to mention, that impacts the resources. When a cap is put on the resources for each school, one of the outcomes is an increase in fund raising activities.

What both posters have stated is true. What TDSBNW has stated are the outcomes when caps are put on. Every school is put on an diet, regardless if the diet is unsuitable for the school. The funding formula for resources, is the cause of the have-nots and have schools. “The polarization of haves vs. have-nots is very real.”, as TDSBNW has stated.

I discovered an interesting angle, and I have no idea if it has been studied, but it is how people values, culture, income levels influences education policy. In my quest, in getting the help for my child, and effective reading and writing help, I came across people who were well-to-do, high up in the social ladder. Their children had learning problems, and were going to schools, where the bulk of the parents have high incomes. The bottom line, is that high-income parents, justifies their ability to send their kids to specialized tutors, based on the belief that the education system cannot afford to have systematic phonics reading and writing programs in the classroom, or even to provide it to the children that have been identified as having a learning problem.  The high-income parents believe that anything beyond what the education system provides, should be provided by the parents.

The high-income parents support the education system and its policies, because it is in their best interests for their children and their future. Some of the schools within the public education system, have become gated-communities, much like the gated-communities one sees in urbanized communities. The high-income parents who have different values, where they believe that the kid down the street with a reading problem, should have access to the same reading program their children have, are fighting an up-hill battle to correct the inequities of the system. They are too few in numbers, to make much of a difference.

Banning fund raising, will only create more inequities in the school. Fund raising is a symptom. It is the funding formula, the education policies, and the centralization that is the cause of the many inequities in the public schools.

Parents and their children are treated differently, depending on income, geographic area, the culture, beliefs, values, and etc., within schools and within the education policies that gives little leeway to the differences of parents and their children. The major players of the education system, danced to a different tune, ignoring the differences. It is why at school board meeting, unions, or even the education faculties rarely discussed or even make plans to level the playing field, inside the classroom. If they did, it would mean a complete transformation of the public education system, and the power being taken away from the various arms of the education system.  And teachers can get back to the business of teaching, and not managing students and their behaviour. Fund raising will go back to the needs of the student population, and their parents.

I was all set to write a post agreeing with Doug.  Then I read TDSBNW’s post and changed my mind.

Yeah, the fundraising thing is deeply problematic.  I think TDSBNW is bang on about the incentive effect - how a total ban in fundraising might actually encourage wealthy families to leave the public system altogether.  I assure you that this is already happenning.

Instead of banning fundraising, perhaps a better approach would be to encourage fundraising but influence where it goes.  My experience is that wealthy people “get” education and they value it highly.  I further believe that many wealthy people would be quite receptive to fundraising opportunities that would benefit those less fortunate.  The key would be the accountability: donors would want to know there would really be a pay off from using the funds.  It’s a question of setting up the channels.

Here’s a very interesting situation.  Branksome Hall (a private girls school in Toronto) is a part of something called “The Triangle of Hope”.  This is a three way partnership between Branksome, an inner city Toronto school, called Rose Avenue Public School, and a school in South Africa.  Here’s a description of part of Branksome’s involvement:

“As part of our partnership with Rose Avenue Public School, groups of Branksome Hall students go weekly to Rose Avenue to run the after-school Homework Club, the JUMP Math Tutoring program, and the Rose Avenue Band. Each summer, 35 Grade 4 and 5 students from Rose Avenue come to a month-long Literacy Camp at Branksome Hall, funded by the Leacock Foundation. Branksome students volunteer at Literacy Camp and faculty from Branksome assist in running the camp.”

That quote, and the preceeding paragraph, all come from the Branksome Hall website:  http://www.branksome.on.ca/about/projectsandpartnerships/triangleofhope/

I looked up Rose Avenue Junior PS on the Frazer Institute School Report Card.  This school is located in St. Jamestown, one of the roughest neighbourhoods in Toronto.  Average parents’ income (according to the report) is $28,100.  While the absolute level of the school’s EQAO results don’t look all that impressive, they are massively higher than what you’d expect based solely on family income.

I would argue that The Triangle of Hope Project is an example of fundraising.  We have some (very) affluent families who have freely chosen to send their daughters to a private school and have paid the corresponding tuition (the funds).  Part of these funds have been used to provide educational resources to children from much more modest backgrounds.

We should do more of this kind of fundraising, no?

Looking for evidence that banning graduating seniors with low attendance from the commencement ceremony would be effective in helping attendance in the same graduating class or in future graduating classes

The Toronto Foundation for Student Success raises money to “level the playing field” between the haves and have nots.  Recently some high schools have raised quite impressive amounts for the foundation.  Their website is http://www.torontofoundationforstudentsuccess.ca

I haven’t had a chance to apply for the Parent Reaching Out Grants yet.  Do you know if the grants will be awarded to students that are going to school via online programs?  I am glad that the deadline is now June 11th.  My daughter will be very pleased to have a $1000 grant to use towards her education.