A car? Trips? Schools raffle off grand prizes

The cost of donating to your neighborhood public school has soared in some Boston suburbs.

Forget about $1 raffle tickets for restaurant gift certificates. Brookline recently charged $100 per ticket for a chance to win a Mini Cooper, Belmont auctioned off a luxury vacation at a resort near Vail, and Winchester will host a gala this June -- at $500 a ticket.

Public school fund-raising events are becoming pricier as the cost of education increases and parents are willing to shoulder more of the burden. Extravagant prizes and Caribbean-themed soirées can boost donations to levels that candy sales cannot. And, while some advocates for low-income schools say such high-end fund-raising could widen the gap between rich and poor towns, suburban fund-raisers say the money is not for luxury items but for teacher training, equipment, and, as in one case, teaching positions.

''It really doesn't matter if you're a Brockton or a Belmont. You still have all these escalating costs," said Lynne Polcari, vice president of fund-raising for the Foundation for Belmont Education and a parent of children in Belmont schools. ''It's incumbent upon parents who want to have these things for the schools to fund-raise for it. It's either that or you watch the level of services decline. Or, you send them to private schools."

Raffle tickets in Brookline are part of a broader fund-raising strategy that mixes traditional letter-writing campaigns with online auctions. In Brookline, raffling a car caught residents' attention and helped establish a pool of donors to pursue in the future. It sold a maximum of 500 tickets at the $100 price, making roughly $38,000 after spending the rest on the prize.

School foundations have existed for years as a way to raise money for public schools for special programs. But as budgets have grown tighter, school systems have begun to rely more on foundations to fill the gap, said Jim Collogan, director of research for the newly formed National School Foundation Association. During the past year, he has been urging school foundations to think beyond ''candy, calendars, and candles," and cultivate big donors, such as corporations or wealthy residents, whether they have children or not.

School foundations should learn from colleges and universities, which tend to get the bulk of donations to education, Collogan said.

''When's the last time a BC student knocked on your door and tried to sell you candy or a calendar? It doesn't happen," he said.

Public schools are more accustomed to demanding money from state and local governments. At first, some Brookline Foundation officials said they felt awkward asking neighbors directly for money, said Skye Kramer, executive director of the foundation. So they wrote letters -- and never raised much more than $150,000 a year.

But rising healthcare costs and a shrinking budget forced the school system to make deeper cuts, especially during the state's fiscal crisis a few years ago. Roughly four years ago, Brookline Foundation decided to raffle a Volkswagen Beetle, or the equivalent in $12,000, depending on the winner's preference. Donations increased by $50,000 that year.

Since then, they have added Apple computers, iPods, and the Mini Cooper to the raffle. They also have flirted with other forms of fund-raising, including an online auction this year that sold artwork, baseball tickets, and a ride in a rare Mercedes. They also held a gala and a live auction April 8 that will raise $500,000 this year, three times the amount of a few years ago.

The foundation gives $150,000 of the money raised each year in grants to teachers and schools. Last year, English teachers used grant money to go to California and England to visit the homes and hangouts of authors students read. A sixth-grade teacher went to China. A high school physics teacher traveled to Florida and rode in an airplane used to train astronauts to experience zero gravity.

The extras for teachers, and the possibility of winning a Mini Cooper, persuaded Lida Lloyd to buy a raffle ticket this year. Lloyd already donates to Brookline schools by mail because, she says, her children were successful there. But she said the raffle tempted her to give even more. The odds were 500 to 1 that she would win the car.

''Those are pretty good odds compared to MegaMillions, where you have to be struck by lightning twice to win it," said Lloyd, who came in second place in the raffle and won a laptop.

School foundations are also holding events to build relationships that could lead to even bigger donations.

Two years ago, Brookline sent apple-shaped chocolates to big donors inviting them to join the ''Green Apple Society." The 70 members are invited to exclusive dinners, one of which recently featured a reading by author Tobias Wolff.

Belmont, which has auctioned trips for several years, started packaging prizes that would appeal to the hard-to-impress, such as cooking lessons with a Belmont resident born in France.

Nationally, prizes also have become more expensive. A foundation for Irvine, Calif., public schools has raffled condominiums, a prize worth more than $400,000.

The National PTA and others worry that the fund-raising will deepen the divide between rich and poor districts.

''It's a huge concern of ours," said Anna Weselak, president of the National PTA. ''We really want to avoid the haves and the have-nots."

Some public schools have rejected donations, though the state does not limit private giving to schools. Last year, Wellesley's school committee refused nearly $400,000 to restore Spanish classes, saying it didn't want to set a precedent in which wealthy parents could pick and choose programs to save.

But last year Winchester parents donated thousands of dollars from its foundation to save teachers' jobs. This year, the foundation hopes to save the jobs of a dozen teachers and one librarian by throwing a gala with a New York blues band.

''There's a huge pressure to try to be successful and save those jobs," said Caren Connelly, board member of the Winchester Foundation for Educational Excellence. ''It is humbling to see people reach into their checkbooks and write these huge checks, but it's also really scary. I wake up at night, and say, 'What if we don't make it?' "