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Schools

A New Education Nonprofit Hopes to Give a Boost to Walnut Creek Schools on the MDUSD Side of Town

The president of the board for PEAK, the East Bay's newest education foundation, explains how the group is getting serious about raising money for Walnut Creek public schools in the Northgate area.

The PEAK foundation is a slender spike on the towering face of the Mount Diablo Unified School District. But it represents a lifeline for 4,250 students in five schools on the northeastern side of Walnut Creek that are part of the massive and financially besieged MDUSD.

Officially granted non-profit status in November of 2009, PEAK, or Partners in Education Achievement for K-12 supports a range of academic, arts and science programs at the three elementary schools ( Valle Verde and Walnut Acres) and one middle school (Foothill) that feed into Northgate High School.

"PEAK started out of necessity, with the realization that the communities around us had educational foundations," says Alisa Mac Cormac, President of the Board.  She calls those foundations the "real backbones" for their associated schools districts.

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PEAK comes at a time when, yes, we all know that public education is no longer free. The state is entering another year of declining revenues and a budget impasse, leaving public schools without the kind of support they once enjoyed. Schools, especially in affluent areas like the East Bay suburbs, increasingly rely on support from parents and the community to pay for programs that might seem to be "extras" but that parents deem essential for their kids to receive a well-rounded education: arts, music, PE, reading support, library time, leadership classes. 

School districts now see community support as an important source of revenue for their general funds. This support can from parcel taxes, bond measures (Mt. Diablo Unified just passed its $348 million bond measure to upgrade campus facilities). It can also come professional-level fundraising campaigns by parents—in the form of check-writing campaigns and gala auctions.

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This support makes up about 30 percent of the budget for the Orinda School District, while  the Walnut Creek Education Foundation last year raised $653,000 to distribute among K-8 schools in the Walnut Creek School District and to Las Lomas High.  

More than 600 California communities have established education foundations to raise money for their public schools. But the Walnut Creek schools on the northeastern side of town, those that lie within the Mt. Diablo Unified School District, have never received this kind of help from a district-wide foundation. That's because no such district-wide foundation exists in the MDUSD. 

There is plenty of fundraising going on at individual Northgate area schools. For example, Bancroft Elementary raised a total of $218,000 from various events in the 2009-10 school year, including its "Dollar a Day" campaign which netted $62,000.

PEAK's origins are tied into MDUSD's growth over the years, MacCormac explains.

The district, one of the largest in California—and rarely missing from recent headlines—covers 150 square miles and includes over 36,271 K-12 students. 

Asked how the MDUSD achieved such bloated proportions, Mac Cormac sighs.  "This goes back over 60 years," she explains, "when this part of Walnut Creek was not incorporated."  She describes the enormous population explosion, as people from San Francisco moved east and the once rural area grew increasingly urban. 

Dividing the district seems the obvious solution for MDUSD's mammoth numbers.  "It's been tried," she says, flatly, referring to past efforts to pull Northgate's five schools out of MDUSD's profile and into the Walnut Creek School district and Acalanes school districts. (Walnut Creek's other public high school, Las Lomas, is in the Acalanes Union school district).

Mac Cormac is firm in her position on the hot-bed political issue: "To benefit PEAK," she says, "this can't be in there.  I can't put PEAK with those political agents.  Do I know about them?  You bet I do.  But I won't put PEAK in the middle of that."

Instead, the foundation is taking an equal, but no less radical stance. 

"Right now, we're not going after the parents for donations," she says. 

Indeed this is a departure for what many parents have come to expect from their children's back-to-school experience: When they go into register their kids over the next week, they will likely be asked write checks in the hundreds of dollars to their school's individual PTA or PTO organizations and to district-wide foundations.

The Educational Foundation of Orinda asks for  $575 for one child and up to $1700 for three, and raised $1.5 million for Orinda elementary and middle schools and Miramonte High School.

At student registration this week at Walnut Creek district schools and at Las Lomas High, the Walnut Creek Education Foundation will requests a donation of $300 per child. These donations are never mandatory, and none of these foundations--from Orinda to Moraga to Walnut Creek--can say that 100 percent of parents donate. Still, parents feel that pressure to donate. 

Mac Cormac said PEAK is waiting a few years before soliciting parents directly for contributions: She said with people losing their jobs or giving directly to schools already, "we're waiting a few years." 

Mac Cormac says PEAK's first goal is "business partnering."

Working with local businesses, the foundation is pursuing what she calls a "win-win opportunity."  Walnut Creek establishments, like Rocco's Pizzeria, Sports Basement, and Ace Hardware, are being asked to offer gift card promotions, with a percentage of sales kicking back to PEAK. "We try to increase their business and contribute to our students at the same time," Mac Cormac says.

So far, PEAK's appeal is 100 percent  All of the invited local businesses have signed on.  The foundation also collaborates in local events: Sport Basement's 2009 Day after Thanksgiving sales raised $2,500 and PEAK will be the co-beneficiary of Walnut Creek Sports and Fitness' 2010 Turkey Trot. 

A May 2011 tennis tournament at Club Sport is in the planning stages, with more events to come.

"By going to business and community resources, we're establishing that we are real," Mac Cormac says, with emphasis. 

Directing the conversation back to the district's unwieldy size and diverse student population, she admits, "a [district-wide] education foundation wasn't going to work.  They don't need the same things in Bay Point as we do here.  Their students need something different."  If that sounds elitist—Northgate is, after all, an affluent part of the district—the impression is quickly dispelled by what follows: "I say, "Come on over!  Once we have worked on this for a time, we'll show you how you can make a feeder pattern education foundation work for your community.' " 

What's clear is that Northgate schools are hungry.  Mac Cormac mentions the need for teacher's assistants, technology software and support, science materials, physical education assistants, librarians, art and music resources.  The lengthy list causes the obvious question: How long can PEAK hold out before asking parents for money?

"We're not going to turn down any money from anyone," Mac Cormac says, "but they [parents] are not our priority."  What the foundation will ask of parents is to respond to a survey PEAK is sending within the next month. 

PEAK will ask for input and encourage recipients to forward the survey to their neighbors.  "In Mount Diablo, 1 out of every 4 homes has students, so there are three other homes that aren't contributing yet.  We want to convince them we have worth.  If it takes me going door to door, [to access the community] I'll do it," she says.

What gives Mac Cormac hope is a blend of familiarity and knowledge.  "I live here," she says, "and I know these downtown businesses." 

She's honest enough to acknowledge that "economic disparity is affecting school communities," but she persists. 

PEAK's first steps may be cliché, (clean up your own corner of the world before moving on,) but with school funding constantly at risk, moving on—not moving out—is what PEAK, and other educational foundations, must do.

For more information about PEAK, visit its website or call 925-627-4243

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