On Oct.1 the Piedmont Education Foundation (PEF) presented district administrators with a check worth $4,039,957. Of that sum, $3,693,297 will be distributed to Piedmont schools based on enrollment, with 94 percent funding teachers’ and support staff’s salaries and benefits, according to PEF’s website.
PUSD administrators work with PEF when creating the district budget, so its donations are worked into expected revenue.
“We literally could not function without [these donations],” said Piedmont teachers’ union APT President Elise Marks. “There’s no way we could afford the programs we need on state funding alone.”
The donation, which was the largest ever by PEF, comes due to district budget cuts last year made to meet union demands for raises. Budget cuts resulted in several positions being removed including the teacher-librarian and sections of classroom teachers, leading to increased class sizes and reduced hours for the library.
Despite 94 percent of funding going towards teacher and support staff salaries, it will not allow the district to increase pay or return any lost positions, PEF Executive Director Heather Frank said.
“The district is still running at a deficit, so these funds, even though it was an increase, it’s still backfilling what PUSD needs for its budget,” Frank said.
The donation is significantly larger than it has been before, reaching over $4 million for the first time.
“It’s amazing to me that they raise as much money as they do, but every year they seem to be able to top what they’ve done in previous years,” Marks said.
There are three primary factors leading to the increased contribution this year, Frank said.
Participation by families with students in the district has increased since last year, for one. Fifty-eight percent of families donated over the past year, Frank said. Additionally, the last Spring Fling was especially successful, raising over $300 thousand at the event.
Importantly, the foundation’s endowment fund of roughly $9 million increases every year. PEF uses five percent of its endowment every year for its annual donation, Frank said.
Frank, Marks, and Hawn all agreed that the necessity for increasing reliance on community donations and property taxes stems from an insufficient state funding system.
“[PEF covers] many of the amazing programs in science, art, music, math, that there’s no way on state funding we could afford as a district,” Marks said.
Hawn connected PEF’s donations to the proposed Measure P, which will be voted on this election season.
“The state doesn’t give us enough money to provide the programs we need. They just don’t. So thank goodness for PEF, thank goodness for folks who will hopefully say yes to [Measure P], that’s how we pay for the best programs,” Hawn said.
The impact of the state of California’s funding system on Piedmont materialized this year in the proposal for Measure P. Measure P expands on Measure H to double the tax per square foot of land on each lot to 50 cents annually, in order to generate an additional $2.1 million annually for the school district.
The COVID-19 pandemic presented a formidable challenge to the district and PEF, Frank said. This is because the pandemic saw many students leave for other districts, or families stop contributing to the fund.
“There was a significant drop in participation during COVID, and we’ve been clawing our way back to increase participation over the past couple of years,” Frank said.
Frank said that PEF would like to raise $4 million this year as opposed to the $3.5 million last year. To meet that goal, PEF needs higher rates of participation.
“Last year fifty eight percent of families with students in the schools gave. If we can bring that up to just sixty eight percent, we can make up that $500 thousand,” Frank said.
