Fundraising Policies Meeting

To: Booster and PTA/O Presidents

From: James Hammond, Superintendent, Sheila Allen and Susan Lovenburg, School Board Policies Subcommittee

Re: Policies affecting fundraising and school-connected organizations, e.g. PTA/O’s, sports and music booster clubs

Fundraising is an important component of community support that helps to enrich our district’s educational program at every level.  We deeply appreciate your work to support our students.

The Board of Education Policy Subcommittee has been working with staff to assure that fundraising policies and practices align with law, and whenever possible, local practices.  Updated policies have been drafted and we are very interested in assuring that our partners have an opportunity to understand and comment on the draft policies.  These drafts are attached, but in brief, they address the following issues:

1. Student participation in fundraising events shall be voluntary; it shall not be made mandatory for students to participate in or contribute to a fundraising event.
2. Students shall not be excluded from an activity that has been funded by a school-connected organization because they did not participate in a fundraising activity.
3. Any proceeds from fundraising activities shall be spent for the benefit of all students participating and may not be spent specifically on the students who raised the money.
4. Contributions may not be solicited or accounted for individual students.
5. Sufficient funds must be raised to cover all students who will participate; students shall not be required to demonstrate an inability to contribute.
   

Please share these draft policies with your boards during the month of April.  On April 26 at 7:30 pm in the East Conference of the District Office, 526 B St., you are invited to a Board Policy Subcommittee meeting to provide input.  Using this public input process, the final policies will go to the full Board in May for implementation in the fall.

If you prefer, you may submit your input in writing before April 26 to sallen@djusd.k12.ca.us, slovenburg@djusd.k12.ca.us and jhammond@djusd.k12.ca.us.

Click the title for the article, “In Time of Budgetary Shortfalls, School Districts Turn to Fund-Raising” [196 KB PDF] which offers further perspective.

Once again thank you for your tremendous commitment to our students.  In a community such as ours, we are fortunate to have such overwhelming support for programs that benefit all students in our district.

All the following documents are PDF format, under 250 KB: