Sweetening the Pot

There was a time when making sure your children got everything they needed in school meant simply paying your taxes. No longer. We wouldn’t ask Gumby to stretch the way we expect education tax dollars to stretch. Some San Diego schools have simply stopped waiting. Here’s how some fund what the government cannot:

Go live. The Coronado Schools Foundation Telethon raised $105,000 last year. Not bad for a four-hour production aired on Coronado’s local cable channel.

Feed the need. EdUCate!, the University City Foundation for Public Schools, hosts one of the most popular school dinner/auctions in town. The event, which started as a dessert-tasting in a bank lobby, now serves samples of gourmet cuisine from 20 area restaurants. It attracts more people than the event can accommodate and raises almost $70,000 a year.

Work it out. It’s still in the works, but Muirlands Middle School and parents are determined to get kids fit. Here’s the deal: The National Fitness Foundation pays for the school to lease state-of-the-art exercise equipment for three years. In exchange, the school reports data on students’ progress. When the time is up, the school gets to keep the equipment for $1.

Bank on it. San Diego City Schools benefit from WaMoola, a program sponsored by Washington Mutual that gives $1 to the district every time someone opens a new checking account. Schools love it because they can spend the money where they need it. Scripps Elementary used its share of last year’s $87,000 to develop a special library collection.

Start from scratch. Opened in September, Construction Tech Academy—the school-within-a-school dedicated to construction, architecture and engineering at Kearny High School—was built with $600,000 worth of materials and labor donated by industry professionals. “Our facility is topnotch,” says school director Glenn Hillegas, “and the cost to the district was very small compared to conventional program start-ups.”

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