St. Paul schools call for foundations to step up to the plate

As part of its effort to reform, the St. Paul school district wants to solicit more stable, long-term investments from corporate and philanthropic partners to improve teacher and principal quality and narrow the achievement gap.

Superintendent Meria Carstarphen raised the issue when she told the school board Sept. 4 that the $1 million the district receives annually from corporate and philanthropic partners is "shockingly small" when compared to the district's $293 million budget.

In St. Paul, she said, "there is the least investment of any community I've ever worked in for philanthropic and private investment in the schools."

The district stresses that it's grateful for the support it receives from its corporate partners, such as 3M, Ecolab and Travelers Insurance.

Such corporate partners provide money for programs that help improve college access for students, help teachers better understand urban classrooms, and bring in scientists who mentor students.

But St. Paul, Carstarphen said, is looking for something more on the scale of the $10.5 million investment that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation made in the Atlanta School District in 2007 to help the district transform all its high schools into small schools or small learning communities; or the $22 million "College Bound" grant Atlanta received from the GE Foundation to improve math and science performance. The Atlanta district is about one-third bigger than St. Paul.

"That's the kind of level that can really move a system forward," said Shirley Heitzman, director of the Office of Innovation and Development for the St. Paul district. "It's not about us getting a grant from them, it's about having them work with us."

More competition for grants

Foundations and private donors in Minnesota gave $212 million to education in 2006, according to the Minnesota Council on Foundations. Not all the money is for Minnesota, because corporate programs such as General Mills' "Box Tops for Education" send money to districts nationwide.

Education is almost always the prime beneficiary of philanthropic giving in Minnesota, said the council's president, Bill King. About 30 percent of education giving in the state goes to support elementary and secondary education.

"It's a logical investment for companies," he said, "since we have so many that depend on highly skilled and educated employees."

The Minneapolis district receives about $5 million annually in private grants, or less than 1 percent of its operating budget, said Melanie Sanco, coordinator of resource development for the district.

As part of its strategic plan, Sanco said, Minneapolis is also stepping up efforts to recruit donors for many of the same reasons as St. Paul: To help develop highly trained teachers and principals, and to increase rigor for students, among other goals.

National and state education grants have become more competitive as districts nationwide are strapped for cash, Sanco said, "so it's a natural thing to start looking at funding streams and funding opportunities in different ways."

St. Paul receives about $10 million to $15 million annually in federal and state grants for education, Heitzman said, which provides mentoring programs for students, training for history teachers and other programs. But many are closely targeted, and can't help St. Paul with the large-scale changes it hopes to make.

"We are at a different place today," Carstarphen told the school board earlier this month. "Two thousand dollars for a single program is not going to get us off the dime. We need to have somebody hang in there with us, through thick and thin, until we start seeing results."

Bringing stable funding

At the school board meeting, Carstarphen said she planned to meet with representatives from the Panasonic Foundation this month. The Panasonic Foundation works with school districts that are trying to break the link between race, poverty, and how kids do in school, Carstarphen said Friday. She also said she has aggressively sought funding from the state and local taxpayers.

"To be fair to the funding community in Minnesota, it is a limited universe," she said. "It's not like New York City or California. This is not about trying to expand the universe, it's about bringing stable, consistent funding that is invested in areas that we know will make a difference for kids."

But King, of the Council on Foundations, said that Minnesota's donors can't be expected to step in where taxpayers should be footing the bill.

"I think there's a lot of support for schools," he said, "so it's less about how do we improve relationships and more about engaging the discussion of how do we finance education in the state. ... I think there is a tendency to look to private philanthropy for resources that are going away from public taxing institutions."

Emily Johns • 651-298-1541