Pasadena City Council is expected to approve resolutions to put the Task Force's proposed charter language before District voters this June, in conjunction with the state presidential primary election.

Why change the way Board members are elected?

PUSD's School Board initiated the charter change because there is a real risk that the District could be sued and found in violation of state and federal Voting Rights legislation, which stipulate "equality of opportunity for protected classes of persons to participate in the electoral process and to elect representatives of their choice" as one of the key principles in ensuring equal representation. If PUSD were to be sued under the Voting Rights Act (and especially if it were to lose), the legal costs would have a dramatic impact on the budget.

Sub-districts have the advantage of making it easier for people to run for School Board, and of giving voters easier access to their representative, who must live in the sub-district he or she represents.

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One of the big concerns raised about sub-districting is that if School Board members represent a narrower geographic area, they might be less inclined to work together for the benefit of all students. On the other hand, given that 46% of PUSD students do not currently attend their neighborhood school, even geographically elected representatives would have to answer to constituents attending schools in other parts of the District. 

What's the difference among the proposed maps?

The Task Force has been gathering community input on four proposed maps: options A & A-1 divide the community more along north-south lines, options 3 & 3-1 have more of an east-west orientation. (Maps can be found on pages 14-17 of the Districting slideshow.)

The main differences between options A and 3 are that A puts Sierra Madre with the Hastings Ranch-Eaton Canyon neighborhoods, and combines the heart of the 91104 zip code with East Altadena; whereas options 3 and 3-1 group Sierra Madre with southeast Pasadena, extend the 91104 sub-district to include Hastings Ranch, and create an Altadena sub-district that extends from Fair Oaks beyond Eaton Canyon.

In legal terms, "protected classes" refers to racial groups, not socio-economic groups or language minorities. One of the issues being raised at community meetings is that Armenian-Americans, who make up approximately 10% of the community but do not constitute a "protected class" under the Voting Rights Act, are under-represented in PUSD governance. Local Armenian groups tend to support the map (option 3-1) that includes a sub-district (B) that most closely corresponds to the Pasadena neighborhoods with the highest concentration of Armenian households. 

What happens next?

The Districting Task Force has more public meetings scheduled over the next few weeks, as well as presentations to the Altadena Town Council and Sierra Madre City Council.

The mapping decision will be made by the PUSD School Board, most likely in May. The maps themselves may yet be tweaked, and the options narrowed, by the Task Force, based on public input, before recommendations are made to the School Board.

For more information, to get answers to specific questions, or to provide input on the maps, email the Task Force at pusdtaskforce@gmail.com.

Allison Hurd used to drive past Webster Elementary several times a week when her daughter was in preschool. “Webster wasn’t our neighborhood school, but it had this wonderful garden. We used to marvel: wouldn’t it be great to go to a school with a garden like that!”

Gardens – whether in pots, raised beds, pockets of earth or baskets hanging from a fence – have a powerful appeal. Parents notice them when they visit schools. And parents, often, are the people who invest in creating and sustaining school gardens.   

Planning and Doing
Allison’s daughter is now in second grade, and Allison is Webster’s new Garden Coordinator. “My first goal was to articulate our mission: why do we have a garden in our school? We have a handful of hard-working parents who keep the garden looking nice, but if we want it to be part of what we teach, we need to have a plan.”

Webster’s garden was started in 2006 by PEN Parent Chris Brandow and a crew of enthusiastic kindergarten parents.

When Longfellow parent Scott Lane proposed putting a garden into a patch of dirt and broken concrete that had been the school’s pre-Measure Y playground, there were plenty of parents to second the motion. “Everyone had ideas about what kind of garden it should be, but it was hard to get consensus. I finally just asked the PTA for some funds to buy materials, scheduled a work day, and showed up with my tools.” In one weekend, parents came out in force to build the planters and do other campus beautification projects.

Longfellow dad Scott Lane with PUSD Facilities
Supervisor Shirly Barrett. 

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Lesson #1: Planning is important – especially if you have a specific long-term goal or want to be sure that the garden is used as a living classroom.

Lesson #2: Doing is what gets things done. Parents and even teachers come and go, priorities shift; if the important thing is to grow stuff, plan to be flexible about how you make that happen.

Getting Other People to Help
Like Scott, Chris Brandow was able to mobilize a crew of 10 enthusiastic kinder parents to build the garden beds at Webster over a single weekend. “Parents are great for getting initial momentum,” agrees Chris, “but in terms of maintaining and making good use of the resource, it’s better to have someone who can be on site on a regular basis.”

Don Benito parent Colleen Cochran agrees that, although gardening is a labor of love, “it’s hard to maintain a large corps of volunteers.” She got 40 people to turn out for her first garden work day, and has planted trees, flowers, and wide variety of native or drought-resistant plants throughout the school’s terraced campus. The school’s Boy Scout troop does some weeding and clean-up on a regular basis, but in the four years since that first work day, she says she’s lucky to get a few people a month to help.

A group of Pasadena-area Starbucks employees is partnering with Eliot Middle School to help build and maintain its new garden. Starbucks encourages its employees to participate in community service projects, and also provides coffee grounds for use in mulch and composting.

This past Martin Luther King Day, a crew of 25+ Starbucks employees helped PUSD Facilities Supervisor (and school garden champion) Shirly Barrett install a drip irrigation system and spread mulch around Eliot’s nine new raised bed planters. The Starbucks team has committed to help with tending the garden over the summer. Eliot Principal Peter Pannell is also considering making space available to neighborhood gardeners when school is not in session.

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          Starbucks volunteer crew organized by Starbucks Manager Jennifer Vanderpool & Lisa Eglinton.

Lesson #3: Gardens are great community projects, but don’t assume that everyone wants to participate in the same way.

•   Find out who your gardening enthusiasts are, and be realistic about their availability.
•   Replenish your garden team each year as new kinder families arrive.
•   Consider having a schoolwide Garden Day once a year, and smaller work days as needed for your die-hard crew.
•   Find out if there is a group willing to take on garden maintenance as a service project, and whether there are some tasks (e.g., picking up a bucket of coffee grounds from Starbucks once a week) that can be handed off to interested individuals with limited availability.
•   Look for opportunities to incorporate the garden space into PTA/school events with wide appeal, like a farmer’s market, pumpkin patch/fall festival, or garden party.

Connecting with the Curriculum
“It’s hard to define or quantify,” says Colleen Cochran, “but for kids to be able to come to a school that’s clean and beautiful – you can’t say it doesn’t make a difference.”

Few would argue that gardens make a difference on a school campus, but whether they are chiefly esthetic or an integral part of the learning experience is another question. There are two factors that seem to determine the answer: (1) how comfortable teachers feel with gardening; and (2) how easily teachers can make a clear connection between the garden and the academic standards their students are expected to master.

At Don Benito, Colleen notes that some teachers are enthusiastic about gardening, engaging their students in planting, studying, tending, harvesting, eating. Some use their classroom plot on a more limited basis, and some simply don’t feel comfortable with gardening, period. Chris Brandow agrees that “teachers who don’t consider themselves gardeners can really shy away from getting involved.”

At Longfellow, parent Kristy Clougherty arranged for a couple of interested but unsure teachers take a gardening class at the Huntington. And Scott Lane simply asks teachers what kind of vegetables or flowers they’d like their students to plant, then brings bags of mulch, recycled cans and egg cartons, and packets of seeds to each classroom. “Once the plants are started, I have a couple of volunteers who can come on a given day and take the kids out to the garden to transplant their seedlings into the beds.”

The bigger challenge, says Allison Hurd, is helping teachers figure out how they can engage with the garden without losing critical instructional time. “The teachers feel they have so little flexibility around the curriculum they have to cover that they just don’t have time to bring their students out to the garden.”

At Jackson Elementary, parent Maya Sharp is working with 1st and 2nd grade teachers who have been gardening with their students, as well as a kindergarten teacher whose students compost and recycle. Longfellow’s kindergarten, says Scott Lane, also “really uses the garden as a teaching tool.”

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The challenge is much greater in the upper elementary grades. Franklin Teacher Irma Gutierrez started a 4th grade garden last year, but now that she is teaching a larger 5th grade class she says it’s hard to find time to get the kids out into the garden – or to organize potential parent volunteers.

Allison has ordered some books from Alice Waters’ “Edible Schoolyard” program. There are a variety of curricula available, as well as classes and resources for teachers who want to learn more about gardening and using gardens as a teaching lab. (See resources.) Still, unless parents are willing to help organize relevant lessons, and minimize extra planning and prep time on the part of teachers, it can be hard to get students out into the garden on a regular basis.

Retired high school science teacher Doss Jones has a lot of ideas for incorporating gardens into the standards-based curriculum. Doss spent the summer following her retirement supervising a high school community service project that has evolved into an acre-and-a-half garden at John Muir High School. She currently teaches (on a volunteer basis) two sections of an Environmental Science Lab “Teaching Assistant” course in which 25 Muir students are growing winter vegetables and flowers while starting “plug trays” of organic seedlings that will be cultivated in the San Pedro Science Center’s greenhouse for distribution to school gardens around LA County. She envisions building a greenhouse on the Muir site and becoming a local hub in the University of California Cooperative Extension’s school garden support program.

“I look at everything in terms of how it can become part of the science lab curriculum,” says Doss, who has obtained 25 different varieties of heirloom tomatoes from a local master gardener and arranged to get botanists from the Huntington to teach classes to Muir students. Although some of her students have received college credit for their garden-related studies, she cautions that immigrant parents may not share middle class parents’ enthusiasm for having their kids learn how to grow produce.

Maya Sharp feels that the mostly Latino families at Jackson are enthusiastic about the prospect of a larger, more accessible school garden. “My background is in community gardens,” says Maya. “I want to produce a lot of vegetables to be able to give to our families. A lot of our parents have experience in landscaping, and I’m hoping to get their hands-on support.”

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Garden Resources
There are a wide variety of resources available to support school gardens, from in-kind donations and discounts to grants, curricular materials, training for teachers and volunteers willing to share their expertise. The University of California Cooperative Extension offers master gardener training courses, and participants agree to spend time volunteering with school and community gardens after they receive certification.

Funding sources include grants from Whole Foods’ Whole Kids Foundation, Jamba Juice, and the Environmental Media Associates, to name a few.

After-school programs may present an opportunity for kids to get involved in the garden and for parents to find garden partners. Larisa Code is a landscape gardener who has spent the past 12 years teaching gardening at several PUSD schools through the LEARNS program. She currently teaches one day a week at Madison, one day at Webster, and is starting a one-day/week class at Jackson Elementary this semester.

Water, as anyone familiar with California’s agricultural history knows, can be a real challenge. “The sprinkler systems at PUSD schools are 50-60 years old,” says Colleen Cochran, “and District watering systems get turned off over the summer.” When Colleen planted trees at Don Benito, she used “gator bags,” a finely perforated plastic bag that can be wrapped around a young tree or shrub and filled with water that is slowly released to keep the roots from drying out.

PUSD Facilities Supervisor Shirly Barrett was able to get a drip irrigation system installed for Eliot’s raised bed garden. And at John Muir High School, where an acre-and-a-half of grass was replaced with garden space, the school was able to get a substantial rebate from Pasadena Dept. of Water & Power for replacing the lawn with a water-wise drip irrigation system.

See below for links to some of the parent and District contacts and resources mentioned in this article.

A PUSD Garden Network?
This piece touches on just a handful of the ways parents are partnering with schools to create and sustain gardens at PUSD schools. Want to connect with people working on garden projects at other schools? PEN is compiling an email list of parents and teachers interested in exchanging school garden ideas, resources, and tips. To join the list or comment on this article, email us at info@penfamilies.org.

Resources and Contacts

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parent contacts  *  funding  *  curriculum  *  expertise  *  potential community partners

Want to connect with people working on garden projects at other schools? PEN is compiling an email list of parents and teachers interested in exchanging school garden ideas, resources, and tips. To join the list or comment on this article, email us at : info@penfamilies.org

Parent Contacts

Don Benito – Colleen Cochran (213-703-5757)

Eliot Middle School – Susan Schwartz (626-345-0307)

Jackson – Maya Sharp (626-497-5098)

Longfellow – Scott Lane (626-437-3380)

Webster – Allison Hurd (408-691-6841)

Sierra Madre – Amy Whist (626-616-1123)

Funding

PEF, PTA – small get-started grants

California Fertilizer Assn (Franklin got a grant for $1200) – resource list: http://www.calfertilizer.org/edlinks.htm

Whole Foods (Whole Kids Foundation) – http://www.wholekidsfoundation.org/gardengrants.php

Pasadena Dept of Water and Power (water audits, “water wise” irrigation)

Curriculum

CA Dept of Education – Environmental Education Initiative (http://www.cde.ca.gov/ci/sc/ee/)

“Edible Schoolyard” Program resources (http://edibleschoolyard.org/resources-tools)*

Center for Eco Literacy (www.ecoliteracy.org); Cooking with California Food (http://www.ecoliteracy.org/cooking-with-california-food)

Karen Jain – science/curriculum

* For a rather harsh but interesting critique of the Edible Schoolyard movement, read Caitlan Flanagan’s diatribe, "Cultivating Failure" in The Atlantic (Jan/Feb 2010): http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/print/2010/01/cultivating-failure/7819/

Then take a look at Corby Kummer’s rebuttal: http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2010/01/school-gardeners-strike-back/33570/

Expertise

LEARNS – garden classes (teacher: Larisa Code: www.larisacode.com)

Doss Jones (John Muir HS, Science Engineering & Technology Academy) dossjones@earthlink.net / 626-797-0599

Shirly Barrett, PUSD Facilities Supervisor (& school garden champion) barrett.shirly@pusd.us / 626-396-5850 x89189

University of California Cooperative Extension, LA County: http://celosangeles.ucdavis.edu/Common_Ground_Garden_Program/

UCCE Master Gardener (training & volunteer program): http://celosangeles.ucdavis.edu/Common_Ground_Garden_Program/Master_Gardener_Volunteer_Training_Program/

Community Volunteer Partners

Scout troops, others seeking service projects

Starbucks (coffee grounds and work day volunteers)

Church groups – FUMC, Neighborhood Church

Web Consultant – Job Description:

PEN seeks a part-time web consultant who can assist PEN staff as needed with refining and optimizing use of available features on our WordPress-based website.

Features we would like to develop include:

• Creating a blog and linking it to the website
• Integrating Mail Chimp and newsletter to site
• Creating templates for 2-3 e-newsletters in Mail Chimp
• Documentation or training for staff
  

Webmaster should be familiar with:

• WordPress
• Mail Chimp
• Event espresso – calendar feature

 Compensation commensurate with experience. Contact Susan@penfamilies.org

Royal Flush Title Sponsor – $5000

• “PEN’s 2nd Annual “Don’t Gamble With Your Kid’s Education” Poker Tournament sponsored by “YOUR NAME”
• Recognition on all materials
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• Distribute promotional materials to PEN members
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• Gift for each guest as the sponsor table

Straight Flush – $2500

• Recognition on all materials
• Prominent signage at the tournament
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Full House – $1000

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Flush or High Card – $500

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Pay securely online via Paypal:

Sponsorship Levels

Royal Flush Title Sponsor $5,000.00 USD Straight Flush $2,500.00 USD Full House $1,000.00 USD Flush or High Card $500.00 USD

Or fill out the information below and email to nancy@penfamilies.org or mail to PEN, 3759 E. Foothill Blvd., #481, Pasadena, CA 91107

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In This Issue

Feature Article: Answers to Frequently Asked Questions about Grants and Fundraising (compiled by Linda Machida)

Resources

Answers to FAQs about Grants and Fundraising

Bake sales and giftwrap catalog sales still feature among the ways parents raise money for their schools, but the range of options and extent of fundraising activity has expanded quite a bit in recent years. One notable development is the establishment of Annual Funds, which allow parents to raise funds (and carry them over from one year to the next) for projects outside the scope of PTA. Contributions made to a school's annual fund are actually made through the Pasadena Educational Foundation (PEF), with the specific Annual Fund as the designee. Another trend is parents helping their kids' teachers or schools find and apply for grant funding for specific projects.

Linda Machida, a PUSD parent and Grants Director for PEF, compiled an overview that includes answers to parents' most frequently asked questions about grants and fundraising. PEF raises over $10 million per year from government and private foundation grants as well as from individual and corporate donors. Grants help support a wide range of programs and activities, from the dual-language programs to drop-out prevention to arts education and the middle school robotics program.

Machida has worked in grant making and grant writing for 25 years, and has been with PEF since 1999. As state funding for education has been cut, she sees parents working harder – and paying more out of pocket – for things like music programs and field trips. PEF's relatively modest Field Trip Fund was quickly depleted this fall, and with mid-year budget cuts expected to hit the District's already very limited transportation budget especially hard next year, this is one area where parent support is likely to make the difference between "some" and "none".

"Parents pay out-of-pocket to cover the cost of field trips for their own child, and often for other children as well," observes Machida. "If parents knew they could make a comparable contribution to a District-wide fund that could be used to reinstate the 'down-time' bus contract [making buses available between 9 am and 2 pm], it would lower the cost of field trips for everyone." Music instruction and the Accelerated Reader program are two other examples of programs for which parents fundraise that Machida thinks might be more cost-effectively supported with a District-wide fundraising approach.

PTA and Fundraising

"Fundraising," according to the California State PTA, "is the method of raising money to finance PTA programs and projects." No surprise there. But fundraising is NOT the main objective of PTA, which seeks to "positively impact the lives of all children and families by representing our members, and empowering and supporting them with skills in advocacy, leadership, and communications… for every one fund-raising activity, there should be at least three non-fund-raising programs aimed at helping parents or children or advocating for school improvements." [Read more on the California PTA website.]

Nevertheless, as the main parent organization at most school sites, PTAs spend a lot of organizational energy on raising money for campus improvements, field trips, and classroom needs.

Traditional PTA fundraisers include merchandise sales campaigns of one type or another, scrip sales, restaurant fundraisers, and events, such as jog-a-thons, car-washes, e-waste collection drives, and the like. The variations on these themes are extensive, to say the least, but there is a notable trend toward the fundraise-while-you-(or your relatives and co-workers)-shop approach. Examples include e-Scrip, the e-Scrip Online Mall variation, which does not require users to register their cards, and the Townloop phenomenon, which has raised thousands of dollars for PUSD schools since it was introduced last summer. (More about schools' experiences with Townloop in our next issue. If your school has been raising money through Townloop, please get in touch so we can share that experience!)

When Mary Trunk became the VP of Ways and Means at McKinley a couple of years ago, she started reaching out to parents who were responsible for PTA fundraising at other schools, to find out what types of fundraisers they were doing, what was working well, and what to avoid. Parents met over the summer to compare notes, ask questions, and share ideas. Eventually, when someone wanted to ask a question or publicize their school's fundraising event, they would just email Trunk, and she would share it with her email group. 

Typical networking questions had to do with sorting through the myriad catalog sales opportunities that are pitched to PTAs, from candy and cookies to wrapping paper and magazines. Parents also shared tips on events like jog-a-thons, which had the advantage of involving everyone and also having a basis in healthy activity rather than sugar consumption. And while event-style fundraisers are notorious for generating low net income, many PTA-sponsored events do include a fundraising component, if only to help offset the cost of the event.

Sometimes it's hard to say that one type of fundraiser is better than another. "When I was in charge of fundraising," says Trunk, "I never wanted to sell cookie dough. I hate that stuff! But this year our PTA president decided to do a cookie dough fundraiser, and it was very, very successful. Sometimes you just need to change things up."

Change is nothing if not constant, and a lot of the people on Trunk's email list are not in charge of fundraising any more. (Even PEF, which handles and processes donations to schools' Annual Fund accounts doesn't necessarily have the most current information about who is in charge of raising money for each school's Annual Fund.) PEN has begun compiling a list of PTA Ways & Means VPs (more on this after winter break), but schools with the highest levels of organized parent involvement may have a different parent heading up each of the different fundraising activities.

The Bigger Picture

Like Linda Machida, Mary Trunk acknowledges that the scale of state budget cuts can make even heroic parent-driven fundraising efforts look like a drop in the bucket. "It takes a lot of work for a PTA to raise $15-18,000," says Trunk, "but when it comes to keeping class sizes down, or even maintaining janitorial services, that kind of money hardly makes a dent. We have to change school funding on a bigger scale."

Efforts to reform the way education is financed in California is a topic unto itself. "Overall State Budget and School Finance Reform" was high among California PTA's legislative priorities this past year. CA-PTA's position includes:

• Support for constitutional amendments to reduce the voting margin in the state legislature for passage of the state budget and revenue measures from the current two-thirds to a 55 percent vote or simple majority.
• Support for legislation and/or ballot measures to lower the requirement to pass a local school parcel tax from the current two-thirds threshold to a 55 percent supermajority.
• Reform of the school finance system to ensure alignment of resource allocations with the programs and services all children need to meet academic standards.

Groups like Educate our State, which hosted an education organizing "bootcamp" in Los Angeles this past fall, are working to make more parents aware of how education is funded (or not) in California, with the aim of mobilizing parents and other education supporters to make change at the state level.

Let us hear from you!

What are parents at your school raising money for? What do you consider your "core" fundraising activities, and how has your school's approach to fundraising changed in recent years? Would you consider joining forces with parents across the District to raise money for specific programs, if it could be done more cost-effectively that way?

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Comments? Ideas? A challenge or question to share? Write to Parent Network: info@penfamilies.org. We’ll post comments, discussion and any additional resource materials or links we receive or find to the Parent Network page on the PEN website.

Resources:

Contacts:  PEN needs your help to compile our directory of parent volunteers! Send a list of key volunteers (PTA President, VP of Ways and Means, Annual Fund Chair, website or communications contact – and their contact information to Susan@penfamilies.org.

Coming next month

We'll come back to the topic of Fundraising over the next several months, but the January focus of Parent Network will be on gardens and "green" school initiatives. Got some best practices to share? Let us know! (Call Susan at 626-345-0307 or email Susan@penfamilies.org.) We’ll also introduce the District’s office of Communications and Community Engagement.

Are there other topics you would like to see us cover? Write to us at susan@penfamilies.org.

2nd Annual
“Don’t Gamble With Your Kids Education”
Texas Hold ’Em Poker Tournament

Friday, January 27, 2012
6 p.m.
La Salle High School
3880 East Sierra Madre Blvd, Pasadena, CA  91107

Buy in soon because tables are going fast!

    Who’s coming?  
* Parents like you who are PEN members
* Anyone who supports public education  
* Parents from Field, Hamilton, Longfellow, Marshall, McKinley, San Rafael, Sierra Madre, Webster, and Willard Schools have already reserved tables.  
Don’t be left out of the fun!

Entry is $50 or purchase a table of 10 for only $400

* Beer, wine, soda, water, snacks
* Door prizes
* Prizes for the top finishers  
* Food is available for purchase
* Re-buy during the first hour
* And a rip roarin’ good time… Just ask anyone who played last year!

All you need to do is purchase an entry or grab some friends and buy a table at the discounted price. If you’re not a poker player you can still play!  Or if you want to support this event, but can’t make it.  Just purchase a ticket(s) and we’ll donate them to some parents at your favorite school.

SPONSORSHIPS also available!

Make your reservation today online or print out a reservation form and mail it with your check or credit card order to PEN, 3579 E. Foothill Blvd., #481, Pasadena, CA 91107.  Questions?  Contact Chris or Jay at poker@penfamilies.org.

WANT TO HEAR ABOUT SPECIAL PEN EVENTS LIKE THE POKER TOURNAMENT AND WINE TASTING?

Have a sample doc or useful link to share? A comment or question about organizing room parents or other volunteers? Please contact us: info@penfamilies.org

Resources:

Parent-driven School Communications Audience-Purpose-Media matrix

How to Say it so Everyone Gets it – Tips for Reaching Different Parents

Contacts:

PUSD Communications Webpage includes templates and menus plus application for getting flyers approved for weekly student folders

PA 2011-12 Tool Kit Overview – PA "job description"

Fall 2011 "School Tour Calendar-at-a-Glance"

School Tour Feedback form – copy to distribute to parents attending your tours (optional)

Fall Program Flyers:  All Programs    Elementary Programs     Middle School Programs

Tentative Open Enrollment Timeline – note: this will be updated mid-Fall

Parent Network – all about PEN's new subscription plan

Who to Contact at PUSD

Short Guide to Parent Councils and non-District organizations

PEN Parent Ambassador Directory