For Funding, School Wrote Its Own Scrip : La Jolla High Foundation Turns to Grocery Stores for Those Little Extras

Parents of La Jolla High School students can now buy their groceries by way of the school’s foundation--a new twist to community efforts to raise funds for unmet educational needs.

Foundation members have arranged to buy supermarket scrip from several grocery chains for 94 cents on the dollar, in $5,000 increments. The foundation then sells the scrip to parents--or to anyone else interested in supporting the school--at face value in $10 or $20 denominations, garnering a 6-cent-a-dollar profit. The scrip can be used like cash for any item in the stores.

For La Jolla High, the plan offers a continuous means of raising money because everyone buys groceries. For parents and other supporters, the method is a cost-free way to provide the school with needed extras, from new volleyball nets to philosophy books for advanced courses that would otherwise go unfunded these days. For the supermarkets, their cooperation provides them with up-front cash and reduces the problem of handling bad checks.

“The program is just starting to roll, but we have already bought $25,000 of scrip and have sold $15,000 in three weeks,” said John Sutherland, a member of the school foundation’s board of directors who learned of the scrip idea from a school in Arcadia that raised $100,000. At La Jolla, if 400 parents get into the habit of buying an average of $300 in scrip every month, the school stands to raise $86,000 or more a year.

Ambitious Project in Richer Areas

The scrip idea represents the most ambitious activity yet among those of a growing number of foundations being established at various San Diego schools. Their support efforts go far beyond traditional booster clubs, which limited themselves to new football uniforms or baseball bats.

So far, almost all of them are in the wealthier areas of the county--including Torrey Pines and La Jolla elementaries, Muirlands Junior High, and Point Loma and Patrick Henry high schools.

There was a similar pattern for the $40,000 or so that schools in the San Diego Unified district received from residents signing over their California tax rebate checks for education. The largest amounts--topped by $3,200 at La Jolla High--went to schools in the northern tier of the city.

But the trend should not be seen as one of schools in affluent areas getting richer while those in poor neighborhoods get poorer, according to school administrators. Rather, foundations are a way to compensate wealthier schools that receive only basic education funds, and little or no special state or federal money targeted for schools in lower socioeconomic areas.

For example, Lincoln High School in economically depressed Southeast San Diego this year has received $2.4 million in general fund money for its 1,043 students. The school also receives an additional $1.6 million for academic programs and extra teachers to raise test scores of economically disadvantaged students, for innovative counseling and tutoring efforts, and for computers and other special equipment.

La Jolla High has received $2.6 million in basic general fund aid for its 1,300 students but only about $150,000 in additional money, with two-thirds of the extra aid targeted for the district’s gifted and talented education program.

“So La Jolla parents complain, for example, that they don’t have a grant to buy computers and they have to find an industrialist or a (private) group to fund that,” said Catherine Hopper, assistant schools superintendent responsible for schools in both low- and high-income areas.

“Lincoln’s (special) funding makes that of La Jolla’s look sick,” Hopper said, though adding that the money is justified because of research showing that children from lower-income areas need additional resources to compete better in school.

“So a foundation is merely a way for schools like La Jolla to be able to have some of the extra things. But remember, even $100,000 or more from a foundation is not going to begin to match extra state and federal money.”

Hopper said parents in wealthier areas are able to express their concern about education in monetary terms. The La Jolla High School Foundation has already raised $90,000 in the first year through memberships ranging from $100 to $1,000, depending on the category, on its way to an ultimate goal of a $1-million endowment.

“They have a commitment to education and are able to put it in dollars,” she said. “Parents in other areas care about their children but are less able to give money.”

In addition, parents in areas such as La Jolla often compare the public education of their children to that possible at private schools, which many such parents could afford if convinced the public sector was inadequate. Their donations represent in part an attempt to give their neighborhood public schools the same financial base as that of private schools.

Experiences Compared

The principal at Point Loma High compared her experiences there to her previous stint as head of Crawford High, in a multiethnic, rapidly changing area of East San Diego.

“At Point Loma, we have a dinner-dance fund-raiser and get up to $20,000 a year for use on activities . . . such as stadium speakers, refurbishing of the media center, etc.,” Barbara Brooks said. “At Crawford, we could break even (on fund raising) through the year.”

But La Jolla Principal J. M. Tarvin points to the supermarket scrip program as one that schools in all areas could adapt, and in particular those schools in the mid-city that have neither a nucleus of wealthy parent donors nor a large low-income population eligible for large amounts of special state and federal education funds.

School board member Susan Davis represents many of the mid-city schools.

Could Work in Poorer Districts

“The (scrip) idea would take someone to organize on a part-time basis, to be the kind of idea that will grab (the interest) of people at a particular school,” she cautioned. “But maybe something like this could help.”

Davis said that parents at Johnson Elementary School in Encanto are upset that the school is losing its special funding because test scores have risen to the point where Johnson no longer qualifies for the aid.

“The parents are at a loss on what to do because they see the money being taken away as soon as the school starts to do well,” Davis said.

Under the grocery program, the La Jolla foundation purchases scrip in $5,000 increments each from Ralphs, Vons, Big Bear, Safeway and Alpha Beta, the chains with stores in the La Jolla area. The foundation receives a 6% discount and actually pays $4,700 for each batch of scrip.

Parents can then buy the scrip of their favorite market in any amount at the school administrative office. It can be used as cash and has no expiration date. La Jolla High has stressed in letters sent to all parents and to staff members that the scrip is the most painless, expense-free way to support education.

Sutherland of the La Jolla High School Foundation said the school made its initial purchases using money already raised through more traditional solicitations. If a particular school foundation had less than $5,000 available for initial purchases, it could buy lesser amounts of scrip at a smaller discount, Sutherland said. Supermarket chains give a 5% discount on scrip purchases between $3,000 and $5,000 and a 4% discount on a purchase of $3,000.

“And maybe they could go to a couple of banks for seed money and seek an interest-free loan as a way of supporting the educational community,” Sutherland said. A school’s business partner under the districtwide Adopt-a-School program with private enterprise could also help out, he suggested.

Principals at those schools with foundations point with pride to items and activities that otherwise would have gone unfunded. General state funding for public schools has not increased beyond that needed to compensate for inflation for the past two years, and lottery funding has been far less than anticipated, accounting for less than 3% of total revenues.

At La Jolla, the foundation has paid for new windows, philosophy books and a lawn mower, among other items. At Torrey Pines Elementary, extra help for the library, the media center and for an enhanced physical education program came from the foundation and the Parent-Teacher Association. Muirlands Junior High has been able to buy new carpeting, choral stands and computers.

“Any gift is vital and is accepted gladly,” Muirlands Principal Allan Peck said. “Our extra (state and federal) money is so limited that we have to look for other ways.”