District Parents Salvage Class Sizes

From lemonade stands to $500 checks left on doorsteps to a $15,000 gift from a Middle East sheik, the unprecedented flurry of campus fund-raising to save smaller class sizes for the Capistrano Unified School District’s third-graders found relief in all kinds of corners.

The only flaw in the parent-driven fund-raisers was that it seemed unlikely every campus would achieve its goal, thus creating an imbalance among campuses within the same district, parents and educators said.

On Thursday, though, district officials announced that there would be no class-size disparity among its 36 schools, thanks to nearly $900,000 in parent donations and some creative rejiggering of campus funds. As many as 50 teachers will be rehired from the district’s layoff list, officials said.

The school board voted to eliminate the program to save more than $1 million out of $22 million the district had to cut from its budget as a result of the state fiscal crisis.

At 23 campuses, parents were able to reach their fund-raising goals -- $40,000 for existing schools and $20,000 for new ones. At an additional five that did not, officials agreed to augment their fund-raising with discretionary money received from the state for improved test scores.

At the district’s eight schools that receive federal funds because they serve large numbers of children from poor families, officials agreed to use that money to pay for the class-size reduction program.

Parents received the money from numerous sources. At one school, a parent donated a new Harley-Davidson to sell at auction. At another, more than $500 was raised from auctioning a school parking space on Ebay.

And at Las Flores Elementary, a mother-and-daughter-run lemonade stand and dozens of parent donations were bringing the school steadily toward its goal.

Last week, though, the school was wired $15,000 from Sheik Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, president of the United Arab Emirates, who heard about the campus’ plight from a student’s grandmother traveling overseas. Despite earlier concerns about whether to accept the gift, district Supt. James A. Fleming said the school’s parents can decide whether to take the money.

Tijeras Creek Elementary parent Terry Corwin, whose school originally brought the idea of school-by-school fund-raisers to Fleming, said she never expected the grass-roots efforts to snowball as they did.

“It’s beyond what I thought could be done,” Corwin said.

A benefit of the fund-raisers has been increased awareness about school funding, Fleming said.

Still, he added, “in a perfect world, parents should not have to raise funds for public schools to do their job.”