We All Leave
I have been a parent of children in Chicago Public Schools for the past 8 years. Many of those years have been spent in some leadership role at their school (Friends Of President, technology chair, raffle coordinator, playground supervisor, etc.). This week a terrific article got published in Catalyst about the prodigious amount of fundraising parents at certain well-heeled north-side schools do to support their schools. It struck a nerve with me and here’s why.
When you start your journey as a CPS parent, you start from the mindset that you want only the best for your child. Whichever school your child ends up at, it is only human to compare that school to the schools your friends, neighbors, and colleagues’ children attend. Your neighbor could be Rahm. Or it could be a very warm, working class family who struggle to make ends meet but show up at your kids’ school every day. In any case, if you’re like me, you raise your hand and pitch in however you can. Often, this leads down the road to fundraising. As the Catalyst article points out, schools that draw from a wealthier base can raise significantly more than others that reflect more of the overall makeup of Chicago. But as a newbie parent, you end up seduced by the idea that your kids’ school could raise a six-figure amount if only you worked hard enough and motivated enough parents at your school to care. And that pretty much is a lie.
Our current school has a lot of involved parents, but it is also has over a 50% low-income population. You will not see items at our auction with $1000 starting bids, nor appeals for parents to write checks of similar amounts as an annual pledge per child. It simply won’t happen.
The other part of this myth is that it’s a finite pie. Once more schools start doing these sorts of fundraisers, you begin to see Hunger Games like effects. I have encountered many times neighborhood small businesses pleading for parents to stop asking for donations because they’ve been hit up multiple times already by parents at other schools. Fundraising fatigue is a reality not just for the askers but for the asked.
The last part of this rant, and why I titled thie piece as such, is that over the years I’ve also seen how fundraising becomes such a challenge due to transitions. As we’ve seen in the news, CPS can’t seem to hang on to its’ CEO’s. A bit further down the hierarchy, you see a trend of high-performance principals leaving, either for a plum suburban job, or just leaving the profession entirely. I also don’t fault folks for looking our for their careers, but the turnover at neighborhood schools is also depressing. These days I don’t expect any principal, especially the talented ones, to stay at a particular school for more than their 4 year contract. It makes it hard to sustain continuity, especially in fundraising.
Finally, as a parent, I have come to realize that my own time is finite. The time and energy needed to grow and sustain fundraising can take years. My oldest is now in 5th grade, and I am already looking towards her high school options. I’ve “retired” as fundraiser in chief and hope others can carry the ball forward. It’s exhausting and burns people out. Many of the other parent leaders I know feel similarly and are either departing for the suburbs or an option outside the CPS system. I hope our new CPS board and CEO realize that the issue of parental flight to the suburbs isn’t because their child is due to “college and career ready” issues. It’s because we are just so, so tired of having to work so, so hard to give our kids the best we can.
