Forget the cookie-dough sales promotions of the past - Newton North High School's athletic department is inviting members of the New England Patriots to play parents in a football fund-raiser.
Exactly which players is not yet known - last spring, Matt Cassel, Kevin Faulk, and Wes Welker played in the game - but organizers are hopeful the April 12 event can rake in as much as $20,000 for new exercise equipment for the school.
It's the season of the school fund-raiser. Although Newton North's efforts may be grander than most, many communities are ramping up fund-raising efforts through PTOs and education foundations. In Framingham, parents at one elementary school organized an auction this month to raise money for a playground. In Marlborough, the education foundation hopes to bring in $2,700 to fund teachers' ideas for classroom projects.
As school expenses for such items as health insurance, pensions, and even heating fuel have grown, so has the amount raised by parents to fund school-related programs, according to Tim Sullivan, president of PTO Today, a Wrentham business that helps parents plan benefit events. He said many of the facilities and programs that used to be considered school standards are now left for parents to provide.
"Thirty years ago, there wasn't a school built without a playground," Sullivan said. "Today there probably isn't one built with one. What used to be considered part of the equation is now an extra."
That's exactly what happened at Hemenway Elemen tary School in Framingham, where the PTO is raising money to build a $150,000 playground. It's been an ongoing project since 2003, involving a steady series of fund-raising events, according to the PTO's project coordinator, Sarah DiConza.
"It was either do it or we don't have it," she said.
Parents donated a basketball autographed by Larry Bird for a fund-raising auction last weekend, as well as a Dennis Eckersley-signed jersey and a ride to school in a police cruiser. A parent who belonged to the Framingham Country Club helped secure the facility as the auction's venue.
Before the event, DiConza said the group hoped to raise $7,000 or more. The last auction raised $16,000. As it turned out, DiConza said, Parent's Night Out raised $8,700 before expenses, $6,000 after costs were subtracted.
Who decides what's an extra and what isn't is a local decision. Framingham schools have no policy on donations, DiConza said. Other communities have created or clarified rules in recent years, sometimes in the wake of controversy.
The Wellesley School Committee turned down $380,000 from a group of parents who wanted to save a popular Spanish language program from the budget ax in 2005. School officials said the gift could set a dangerous precedent, leading to a curriculum shaped not by educators, but by whoever in town had the deepest pockets.
Last year, the Newton School Committee faced a similar predicament. Officials returned a $50,000 check to former mayoral candidate Michael Striar, who had offered to pay the salary of a fifth-grade teacher at the Mason-Rice School in Newton Centre.
Several years ago in Holliston, after school officials cut the music program, a parents association funded a position for a year. Later, the district restored the position to its regular budget.
For years, an anonymous donor in Shrewsbury has funded the school district's Chinese language program. Last year, Shrewsbury voters defeated a $5 million override, prompting Nobel laureate and town resident Craig Mello to donate $30,000 to a "citizens' fund" for the schools.
Arnold Fege, director of public engagement for the Public Education Network in Washington, D.C., a group that helps schools in low-income areas create foundations, said there's increasing need for outside help as school resources are redirected to core subjects and standardized testing as a result of federal No Child Left Behind legislation.
"No Child Left Behind narrowed the focus of the curriculum," he said. "Schools will spend more time on reading and math at the expense of" physical education.
Depending on where you live, fund-raisers can be grand undertakings or relatively modest. The Marlborough Education Foundation, a group that raises money for the district's schools, hosts two large annual fund-raisers. One is an event and auction at Roller Kingdom in Hudson. The other is the "thank an educator" program during the holidays, when parents are asked to write a check in honor of a teacher. Teachers get recognition for the amount of donations they bring in.
Poker tournaments are out of vogue now, said Penelope Kahn, the Marlborough Education Foundation's president. "It's hard to come up with the next new thing," she said.
Kahn said the money can buy computer software and pay for professional development and grants to teachers who apply for money for special projects. The account usually rolls over about $5,000 a year.
In Newton, the city's education foundation has a $1.6 million endowment. The foundation's grants primarily are used for teacher and professional development programs, according to Chryse Gibson, its executive director. The foundation also plans to launch a $25 million to $30 million capital fund-raising campaign.
"Money is a tool. The ultimate goal is greatness" in education, Gibson said. "Part of reaching that goal is certainly the investment of private monies into public education."
The Newton school system also has a policy created by the School Committee on what it will allow and will not allow parents to pay for through fund-raising. The policy will allow Newton North's athletic department to pay for new cardio equipment with the money from its Patriots fund-raiser. (The department is hiring a Rhode Island company to arrange it.) The equipment bought with the funds will be used in the fitness center at the new Newton North High School, which is just starting construction.
Mark Wadness, copresident of the Newton North High School Parent-Teacher-Student Organization, said the group isn't allowed to buy some items for the schools, such as computer software. But he said the group is allowed to purchase computers.
"There's a lot of quirky rules like that," Wadness said. "They don't want the more affluent wards to have twice as much as schools that aren't in the affluent areas. The hard part is if your kid goes to a certain school and you want to do something for that school, you can't."
Newton Superintendent Jeffrey Young said he tries not to rely heavily on parents' fund-raising. But the city is considering a tax override because of an anticipated budget shortfall, and parents routinely come to him with offers to fund programs and services.
"It's human nature to want to take care of your own child first," he said. "I understand that and respect that, but my job is to balance that and work toward equity."
"I think there's a problem in relying on public fund-raising to serve public education," he added. "It's the public's obligation to support the public schools. We have to think about 11,500 kids."
Megan Woolhouse can be reached at mwoolhouse@globe.com.
