Wealthy La Jolla School District Maps Way Around ‘Robin Hood’ Laws

Cooled by ocean breezes and tucked into a cozy hill in one of the nation’s wealthiest and best-educated communities, La Jolla High School seems to have it made. It produced all three Westinghouse science finalists from the state of California this year and sends more than 93% of its graduates to college.

But La Jolla feels financially threatened. Like schools in many affluent areas across the country, it has lost its funding advantages because of lawsuits and legislation designed to ensure that students in poor school districts get equal access to education.

Now, schools like La Jolla are trying to reduce the impact of “Robin Hood” laws with a new strategy that could sharpen the debate over educational equality in America.

From the tree-thick hills of Edgemont, N.Y., to the green lawns of Bellaire, Tex., and the landscaped gardens of Newton, Mass., wealthy communities with celebrated public high schools are setting up private foundations to make up the difference between the public money available to them and what they think their children need and deserve.

La Jolla has not just one foundation, but two: the Foundation of La Jolla High School, which seeks money to maintain the quality of the school and its classes, and the La Jolla High School Scholarship Foundation, which helps graduates go to college.

A large bulletin board in the school office lobby lists dozens of foundation contributors, designated as “contributors,” “friends,” “members,” “sponsors,” “trustees,” “patrons,” “donors” and “benefactors,” depending on the size of their gifts. Principal Jay Tarvin said he and the foundation trustees, who raised about $100,000 last year, are aggressively seeking ways to bring more private money to the school because they feel increasingly shut off from public funds.

A few years ago, schools like La Jolla could rely on the fact that they were surrounded by prosperous communities and expensive real estate to finance generous budgets through property taxes. But America’s traditional system of raising money for public education through local property taxes is under assault. One of the most forceful challenges has come from school districts poor in taxable property that found themselves spending much less on their students even when they taxed residents at a higher rate than property-rich districts.

Since the late 1980s, poor districts have waged court challenges in more than 20 states. Michigan, Texas and Kentucky, among others, have completely overhauled their funding systems to achieve a fairer distribution of money, and lawsuits are pending in at least 12 states.

Some state governments have tried to use their own funds to achieve greater equity by giving more to poor districts. Others have relied on Robin Hood solutions that either put limits on spending by rich districts or actually shift property tax money from them to poor districts.

Some attorneys and parents who have waged equity battles are outraged by the move toward private foundations, arguing that it proves just how much rich neighborhoods want to protect their privileges. And some affluent parents don’t disagree. “We realized the funding was not going to be getting any bigger from the state or the Houston district,” said Kathy Marks, a leader in the Alumni and Friends of Bellaire High School.

In California, parents have argued in court--unsuccessfully so far--that the foundations “are just a way around these equity suits, a way of going outside the system,” said Paul Minorini, an attorney in the education group at the Washington law firm of Hogan & Hartson.

Jonathan Kozol, who chronicled school-equity battles in his 1991 book “Savage Inequalities,” argued that allowing rich communities to perpetuate an unfair advantage in public education is a betrayal of fundamental American values.

“There is a deep-seated reverence for fair play in the United States,” he said, “and in many areas of life we see the consequences in a genuine distaste for loaded dice; but this is not the case in education, health care, or inheritance of wealth. In these elemental areas we want the game to be unfair and we have made it so; and it will likely so remain.”

Wealthy school districts take very seriously any threat to their schools, particularly high schools that have been successful in getting children into prominent colleges. Real estate agents sell homes to wealthy newcomers based on such schools’ reputations. Other businesses wanting to serve such affluent clientele follow.

“The wealthy districts are all of a sudden exploring school foundations because of the Robin Hood issue,” said Dan McCormick, whose Williamston, Mich.-based School Educational Foundation Consultants has 300 public school clients.

About 2,000 public high schools, or 13% of the national total, have created foundations, said Michael Wessely, an official with the National School Boards Assn. Much of the foundations’ money goes for advanced equipment, such as a greenhouse for a school in Wall Township, N.J., or computers designed to improve writing skills in Newton, Mass.

McCormick said local foundations cannot raise anything near the multimillion-dollar budgets of their school districts. But 95% of that money, he added, is dedicated to salaries, maintenance and other fixed costs, leaving only a thin margin for school improvements and experiments. In this area, an extra $100,000 a year can make a big difference, he said.