The parents group at the school had summoned families to tell them the news. And to present an alternative: a public education that would no longer be free.
Get out your checkbooks, parents were told. All those wrapping-paper sales and pancake fundraisers wouldn't be enough. We could either pony up some hard cash, or see Ivanhoe's standing as one of L.A. Unified's best schools threatened.
"We shouldn't be here tonight," parent Perry Herman told the crowd. "Our nation chooses to bail out investment houses rather than insuring our children."
But here we were, with the Friends of Ivanhoe urging parents to pay whatever they could to cover the shortfall and save the jobs of math coach and academic advisor Lynda Rescia, technology coordinator Carlos Hernandez and literacy coach Mary Frances Smith-Reynolds.
[snip]
The principal, Jumie Sugahara, told me she hadn't yet received final budget numbers from district headquarters and couldn't say for sure how bad the hit would be. But the parents group did some math and decided to start the fundraising drive now, assuming Ivanhoe and other high-performing schools would get bigger cuts than schools that have greater challenges.
Pay $25, if that's all you can afford, Herman said. But he pointed up to a screen encouraging parents to dig a little deeper. Those three jobs can be saved, he said, if 80 parents contribute $250 apiece, 75 contribute $500, 50 fork over $1,000, 20 give $2,000 and six bust the bank with $5,000 contributions.
California, like most other states, is facing a huge budget shortfall. Despite voter initiatives in recent years which attempted to insulate education from the up and down of budgeting, schools are facing a huge cut this year. That is the background for this article.
