Fair Funding for All Students

As a mom like all parents, we want the best for our children. With more options that have been provided to inner city children through charter schools, it has given hope to many families. Yet, still there is still a separation of the have and have nots appear once again. My son attended a charter school that despite my concerns of staff qualification, still managed to build very profitable relationships with corporations of many sizes.

They also managed to make friends across political area's. They also had the where with all to utilize the position of some parents to acquire things and services that the school did not have. His new school is in the same position, it is a sister school of a private school in another state. It goes to 12th grade, and provides good college mentoring. This is one of the reasons that it was suggested to me by an administrator at his old school, along with another child going to the 8th grade. His prior school catered to the special education population, and had a mix of most of the low-income to middle income children attending the school. It served very well for getting money, to fund the school when Mr. Fenty cut the budget, despite rising enrolment of charter schools. My question is, if all of the cities charter schools are under one organization, how come there is still such a divide in funds or information of how to receive them in multiple sources?

I attended a meeting one evening given by the lobbing organization, and during the introduction I spoke about funding fairness. The group was very responsive to my concern and comments, about the subject of funding. Since I assisted the development department at my son's former school with finding funding resources, I asked if I could do the same for the other schools that did not have this information. I was not given a direct answer, but it was basically no. Witch to me seems like a counter productive action, if the whole purpose is to provide better education options to low-income students.

Here is a solution to begin the process.

1. First figure out what needs that are not being met by your current budget, and the amount that will be needed for 1 school term.

2. Utilize the work of college interns to find grant money that is available, that you can receive with out going through another larger organization. Such as major corporations ie target and other that have a community based program where there stores or products are sold. Most companies have a program of giving back to the community.

3. Build relationships with law firms and other organizations in the surrounding area. See if they can provide your school with school supplies, if you tend to run out and the budget does not allow for flexibility.

4. Not all council members are against charter schools, in fact Mr. Obama likes them. Make friends with all politicians, after all this is DC. This is like Hollywood for politics, your political connections can get you far in this town.

5. The Foundation Center on Kst has wonderful classes on for non-profits. I have attend the classes there, they are very informative. Get a staff member to attend on subject that your school my want more information on.

I feel that we all should work together especially if you are within the same organizations. Information and when connected with the right strategic plan, it is a powerful thing. The purpose of parents sending children far out of there neighborhoods to attend school in to give there children a better life then they had. So sharing information is vital to the process that is started my many parents. Charter schools in inner cities help give children a road map to a bright future, keep the light on so that they can get down the road to success.