Finding extra cash for school
Group would fund grant-writing job
At a time when educational innovation and experimentation struggle for funding, two Andover School Committee members say they plan to launch an organization dedicated solely to finding private funds for the school system.
After a few years of stops and starts, committee members Anthony James and Arthur Barber said the Andover Coalition for Education is beginning to take shape as a way to focus fund-raising efforts for alternative programming across the school system.
Still in its nascent form, the coalition is being led by volunteer executive director and former School Committee member Tina Girdwood, whose current priority is making the organization autonomous by building an advisory board of directors. Girdwood, Barber, and James are hoping for an official launch in May.
Since Girdwood began her tenure last fall, the coalition has joined with the Essex County Community Foundation to ensure donations to the coalition are tax-deductible and has begun a quiet campaign to fund a grants manager position for the school system.
James said the coalition has raised almost $40,000 toward funding the position, which would create an employee of the school system dedicated solely to identifying and securing external funding opportunities.
''In tight times, there's no way a school system could be able to support a position of this sort," Girdwood said, adding that most of the grant-research and grant-writing responsibility currently falls on the assistant superintendent and school principals.
''A full-time grants position could raise millions," Barber said. The appeals would be made mainly to local businesses and individuals.
Barber and James had agreed to research the possibility of a new foundation at the beginning of their terms.
They met with officials from a number of area foundations, including those in Brookline, Needham, and Newton. These foundations are built on similar models: A board of directors -- usually residents -- supervises a staff dedicated mostly to direct-appeal fund-raising. The Newton Schools Foundation, in particular, has built a large, annual direct-mail campaign and a number of the organizations host fund-raising events throughout the year.
Both Barber and James said they were inspired by the model and impressed by the amount of money a fully equipped foundation can raise.
According to their websites, the Lexington Education Foundation raised $245,000 in fiscal 2005, and the Winchester Foundation for Educational Excellence $125,000 in 2003. Girdwood said the Newton Schools Foundation, among the oldest in the state, now nets about $100,000 a year.
The foundations control where the money goes, and, for the most part, they make priorities of professional development and alternative approaches to curriculum design, all touting the importance of funding innovation and rewarding inventive teachers when tax revenue and state aid cannot.
The Andover foundation would differ in that the grants probably would go to systemwide programs rather than the initiatives of individual teachers. And unlike Newton's grant writer, who works for the foundation, Andover's would be an employee of the school system, Girdwood said.
James cited two current examples of programming he hopes the coalition will help support and expand in the future. They are the expeditionary program at Wood Hill Middle School and the engineering lab at West Middle School. Both programs, he said, attempt multidiscipline, hands-on approaches to learning that are very different from traditional classroom methods.
These programs were funded by corporate donors such as
James said that the successful execution of these programs requires teacher training, the appropriate materials, and consultation with external resources -- all costs beyond the reach of a school system that has trouble finding enough money to maintain existing programs from year to year.
These foundations ''have enabled schools to do pilot programs and take schools from being good districts to being excellent districts," Barber said.
Girdwood said these foundations often spring up in the face of tough financial circumstances, such as the passage of the tax-limiting law Proposition 2 1/2 in the 1980s, and the recession of the early 1990s.
The intent, James said, was not to shore up the ever-tightening school budget or the $4.8 million Rebuilding and Advancing Initiative proposed by Superintendent Claudia Bach, an ex-officio member of the coalition.
''These foundations do not attempt to fund the operating budget. They don't hire teachers," James said. ''The focus is enrichment, the educational experience for kids."
