Viewing a single comment thread. View all comments

drpvn t1_iwsh72g wrote

Reply to comment by princessnegrita in Public Schools Are NYC’s Main Youth Mental Health System. Where Kids Land Often Depends on What Their Parents Can Pay. by LittleWind_

Just give me a concrete example of a school with wealthy parents that raises so much money that it outstrips the funding gap between it and a much less wealthy title I school. I don’t think you’ll find one. There are only a handful of schools with PTAs that could possibly raise enough money to make the exercise of comparing worthwhile to even attempt. Generally speaking the wealthiest schools get the least amount of money, even when private fundraising is included. Happy to be proved wrong.

(Also, note that the spreadsheets of data from 2019 that came out of Treyger’s law are known to be inaccurate. I’m not aware of any good data on PTA fundraising, but maybe the data got better after 2019.)

1

princessnegrita t1_iwve2tc wrote

Alright this is an exercise in foolishness because there are so many variables that effect costs but you issued a challenge and I’m a nerd so here we go:

William Sherman (PS 87) took in $20.3k per kid and raised an additional $2.3k per kid. The Title 1 school, Irving Gladstone (PS 186) took in $21.3k per kid and got an additional $681 per kid for Title 1. So that leaves our total at $22,600 vs $21,981 for the Title 1.

That’s a small monetary difference per kid but it’s a difference nonetheless. All without any necessary context.

The necessary context is that education and behavioral needs vary which means costs vary:

  • 37% of the kids at Gladstone are learning English vs 3% of the kids at Sherman
  • 71% of the kids at Gladstone come from a low income background vs 8% at Sherman
  • Gladstone has a below average number of teachers with 3+ years of experience and Sherman has an above average number of teachers with experience (a 10% difference)
  • They have a similar amount of special needs students but Gladstone spends a below average amount on their education ($25k per kid) while Irving spends a slightly above average amount ($34k). This could be Irving being bad with money OR it could be that Irving’s special needs kids just have more needs than Sherman’s.

So now that tiny monetary difference on paper is less tiny because of course the school with a ton more ESOL and low income kids need to spend more. They literally have more kids with more needs.

But yeah all of that culminates in what I was already saying was the issue: if you put all the wealthy and well supported kids in one school and all the low income latchkey kids in another, they aren’t going to be able to provide the same education. If you mixed up all the kids from both schools, divided them equally and sent each half to each one of the schools, they’re more likely to be able to cover each kid’s needs. You’d also have a good balance of parents who can’t get involved in school activities and parents who can.

2

drpvn t1_iwve6v9 wrote

Appreciate the engagement. I will try to dig into this later. But what is your source for the amount raised by the PTAs? Can you link it?

1

princessnegrita t1_iwvpvqx wrote

The only source there is: the 2019 Treyger collection. I wish they committed to collecting this info but it looks like the effort died after that first try.

BUT I picked Sherman because their number seems high but not clearly wrong like the ones that were $10k+ raised per kid. The fact that they have at least 3 professional fundraisers in their Parents Association as well as multiple named yearly fundraising events, lends credence to the accuracy (in my opinion).

2