An examination of issues surrounding fund-raising in Ontario public education

Public education in Ontario has undergone several political changes over the last few decades with the promise of improving our education system. However, none of these changes has reduced the lack of contentment with the state of affairs in public education. In fact, publicly funded schools now find the pursuit of private sources of revenues, commonly referred to as fund-raising, essential in order to provide basics such as textbooks, classroom supplies and library books (People for Education, 2002; Fine, 2001; and Tymko, 1996). Interviewed principals stated that fund-raising was an activity that would never cease in schools, even with the insertion of extra revenue. Even more disturbing are the findings of Molnar (2000; 2001; 2002; 2003) in which he states that schools in the United States are attempting to raise these supplementary sources of revenues by engaging in activities that undermine their curricular message and, in some cases, promote unhealthy lifestyles for students. The purposes of this paper are to provide insight into the policies, degree, level, pattern, motivation, perception, amount, typology, and effects of fund-raising in publicly funded elementary and secondary schools across Ontario by focusing on certain schools in southwestern Ontario as case studies. This study uses a mixed method research approach in the form of qualitative and quantitative comparisons among multiple or comparative case studies involving the use of interviews, questionnaires and public documents. The relationship between fund-raising revenues and the overall government expenditures is explored in this study, which provides an in depth look at fund-raising in southwestern Ontario publicly funded schools. The results indicate that the government has very little involvement in the regulation and control of fund-raising in publicly funded schools. In fact, the government has left the responsibility for regulating school fund-raising in the hands of school boards of Ontario. The school boards in turn, have passed the majority of the responsibility of regulation and control of fund-raising onto the principals of each school. Each board has developed policies relating to the collection of supplementary resources within schools. However, these policies vary considerably in their depth and breadth.

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