Transcription of Kate Snyder for the show Foundations of Education #272
Speaker 1: You are listening to Love Maine Radio, hosted by Dr. Lisa Belisle and recorded at the studios of Maine Magazine in Portland. Dr. Lisa Belisle is a writer and physician who practices family medicine and acupuncture in Brunswick, Maine. Show summaries are available at lovemeradio.com. Here are some highlights from this week’s program.
Kate Snyder: As we contemplated an independent foundation for Portland’s public schools, we did a lot of research and looked around the country and around Maine and found examples of education foundations that were really doing amazing work to support the public schools.
Gabe Weiss: We’ve done a wide variety of things ranging from bringing iPads to classrooms in kindergarten and 1st grade to bringing artists in residence to the high school. A big one that we just funded last year is a shellfish upweller. That’s a structure that essentially cultivates clams, and it’s down at the town landing, and so we have students who are studying the clams, their growth cycle, and then we’ll be reintroducing them into a clam-flats of Yarmouth.
Lisa Belisle: This is Dr. Lisa Belisle and you are listening to Love Maine Radio, show number 272, Foundations of Education, airing for the first time on Sunday, December 4th, 2016. How do we give our students a full and rich educational experience? Maine is known for its exceptional schools, dedicated teachers, and administrators. Recently, community members have started engaging with their school systems through education foundations which fund additional enrichment activities.
Today we speak with Kate Snyder, Executive Director of the Portland Education Foundation, and Gabe Weiss, President of the Yarmouth Education Foundation. Thank you for joining us.
Speaker 1: Love Maine Radio is brought to you by Berlin City Honda where the car buying experience is all about easy. After all, life is complicated enough, and buying a car shouldn’t be. That’s why the Berlin City Honda team goes the extra mile by pre-discounting all their vehicles and focus their efforts on being open, honest, and all about getting you on the road. In fact, Berlin City recently won the 2015 Women’s Choice Award, a strong testimony to their ability to deliver a different kind of car-buying experience. Berlin City Honda of Portland. Easy, it’s how buying a car should be. Go to berlincityhondame.com for more information.
Lisa Belisle: As listeners of Love Maine Radio know, we are big fans of education here at the radio show and at Maine Magazine. Today I have with me another big fan of education: This is Kate Snyder who serves as the Executive Director of the Portland Education Foundation. The foundation is an independent, non-profit corporation whose mission is to raise philanthropic support for the Portland public schools. Kate is responsible for the leadership and management of the day-to-day operations, including fundraising, marketing, and facilitating program development and implementation as envisioned by the board. Thanks so much for coming in today.
Kate Snyder: Thank you for having me.
Lisa Belisle: This is very impressive work that you are doing with the Portland public schools. I wonder, for those people who aren’t familiar with education foundations, what is it that you do?
Kate Snyder: Well, if you look around Maine, and if you look beyond Maine, you’ll see that there are lots of education foundations that are established to help bring community support in for the public schools systems. It’s not at all unusual to have a foundation that supports a K-12 public school system and looks to garner support from companies, businesses, corporations, foundations, and individuals within the community. As we contemplated an independent foundation for Portland’s public schools, we did a lot of research and looked around the country and around Maine and found examples of education foundations that were really doing amazing work to support the public schools.
Lisa Belisle: Now, having grown up myself in largely the ’80s, I guess, there wasn’t a lot of work being done with education foundations that I’m recalling. Where did this phenomenon come from?
Kate Snyder: Well, I don’t know exactly where it came from. I do know that a town that I grew up in outside of Cleveland has had an education foundation since the mid ’80s, and so I was able to study that model and get a sense of what they, in particular, are in business to do. What I learned was that this is a community that’s outside of Cleveland, and they recognized that there was an opportunity to harness support from Cleveland-based businesses of which there are a lot. They bring in a significant amount of revenue annually to support programs within the school district that they support.
Again, as we contemplated this for Portland, there were discussions around the table with regard to are there opportunities for support for the public schools that we can tap into that haven’t yet been tapped into? We know that individual schools, PTOs, they do an amazing job gaining support from the communities that they serve. We know that there are booster clubs that support arts and athletics. In Portland, there are a couple of other fundraising entities as well. There’s the multilingual and multicultural department that does some of its own fundraising and we have Portland Adult Ed that does some fundraising.
As a district, as a whole, are there opportunities to bring support for the whole school system, K-12? Our answer was yes, that not every business has been approached from a system perspective to say, “Here we are as Portland’s public schools, we’re looking to benefit all the schools, all the students, K-12, we’re working closely with district administration, and we’d like to ask for your support in a way that hasn’t been asked for in the past.” The response has been very good.
Lisa Belisle: You served on the Portland Board of Public Education from 2007 to 2013, and you were the board chair for two consecutive terms and chair of the finance committee. You have quite a lot of background in the education field. Why did this interest you?
Kate Snyder: Well, first of all, I have three children who have attended Portland’s public schools, and so just from a consumer perspective, I’ve seen how excellent the Portland public schools are and what a wonderful job they do with such a diverse group of students, and I’ve been impressed at every stop along the way. As a member of the Portland Board of Public Education, I saw kind of from a macro perspective how difficult budgeting can be in this large school district with so many student needs.
There’s a formula that’s called the Essential Programs & Services Formula. The state works against that formula, and there’s federal money that comes in against that formula, but that doesn’t address things like arts and athletics. It doesn’t support some of the, what some people like to call, extras, but I don’t believe they’re extras. I believe that a student’s experience is made richer by all sorts of exposure because you never quite know what’s going to trigger a student’s interest and passion. I guess having a seat at the school board table gave me an opportunity to see how the school district does its budgeting and where there are opportunities for engagement.
I think that the foundation is a perfect fit for Portland schools. Portland does a really amazing job with our teachers and ed techs and all the school-based staff interacting daily with students who have needs all along the spectrum just like any other school district, but it’s those areas of extra where I think any school district struggles. It’s the athletics and the arts and the things that happen in the classroom that might not be included in the regular operating budget.
One of the things that Portland Education Foundation does is a Teacher Grants Program. This is a direct-to-teacher relationship where a teacher can apply for funding up to $1,000 to Portland Education Foundation, and they’re looking for funds to support an initiative that is based in the classroom. We think that that is a great way to affect teaching and learning and really get right to the source. Who knows better how to spend money than a teacher who’s in a classroom with kids all day long?
Portland Education Foundation feels really great about that opportunity to not only support some of the bigger district-wide initiatives when it comes to some of those other things, but to go directly to the teacher and provide funding for things that they don’t have in their budget but they know will help move the needle for some kids in their classroom.
Lisa Belisle: Give me examples of some of the things that you’ve funded.
Kate Snyder: Okay. Just last year, a teacher at Hall School put together a program where the kids were learning about birds. I think it was a science unit, but she was able to expand it beyond just science and have it touch language arts and other areas as well, like art, for example. With a grant from Portland Education Foundation, she was able to buy some books, bring in a speaker who was talking about birds, work with the art teacher to create paper mache birds, and they were able to visit the Audubon. Really, it was a program that was made richer by the addition of some funds that allowed the teacher to do some extra things that may not have otherwise been possible.
Lisa Belisle: How long as the Portland Education Foundation been in existence?
Kate Snyder: Well, that’s an interesting question. In 1992, a 501(c)(3) was incorporated in Portland and it was called The Portland Partnership. The mission of that non-profit corporation was community engagement and parent volunteerism. That non-profit group worked for a period of time within the Portland public schools. In 2009, that group went through some changes, and so the board of that group took the 501(c)(3) charter and started the Portland Education Foundation. It was a group of volunteers who served on that non-profit board who were looking to work closely with the district, who wanted to help raise money for the district, but there was a lot of waiting involved.
What happened was in 2013, a resolution was passed by the school board and it called for the creation of the Budget and Revenue Advisory Task Force. The Budget and Revenue Advisory Task Force was put together by the superintendent at the time, who was Manny Caulk, and that group of folks, it was 12 or 13 members of the community who had no relationship with the school district other than being maybe parents or members of the community. It wasn’t teachers, educators, administrators, it was folks who were asked to come to the table because they had expertise in one area or another.
They came together and looked critically at the budget for Portland’s public schools, and they looked at how Portland does its budgeting process, and they were there to be a critical friend. They made some recommendations for improvement and they asked some interesting questions, and they issued a report in March of 2014. That report had a central recommendation, and that recommendation was that it said Portland ought to have its own non-profit foundation that generates support for Portland’s public schools.
What happened was the report was issued, was put on the superintendent’s desk. The superintendent looked at it and said, “This is great work by a lot of folks in the community who gave their time and have something to say and we really need to pay attention. At about that point in time, summer of 2014, the superintendent pulled together some folks and I was one of them. He said, “How are we going to do this and what are we going to do?”
The CliffsNotes on this are that over about a year worth of time, we were able to take the recommendations from that task force and merge them with the existing 501(c)(3) so that there was a vision for moving this path forward in the way that we have it today.
Lisa Belisle: I don’t want you to get into particulars, because obviously there may be some information that is sensitive or complex, but in broad terms, what type of money are you talking about here?
Kate Snyder: I think that’s a great question. In Portland, given that we really only have one full year under our belts, it’s a question that we’re asking every day and looking to answer every day. Our task is to generate philanthropic support for Portland’s public schools. We are looking to do that in three ways: Through individual support, through corporate support, and with the help of foundations. Whether that money comes in as a $10 contribution from an individual or a $20,000 grant from a foundation, we are looking to help move the needle in Portland’s public schools for teachers and students.
As I said, we just finished up our first fiscal year, so we’re about to publish our fiscal year ’16 annual report. The dollars that have been brought in in FY16 are in the range of $328,000. If you look at the report, you can see the breakdown in how that money was spent. The foundation is raising money against specific initiatives that have been identified by the district.
We’re so lucky in Portland to have three ex officio members on our board. The Portland Education Foundation has the superintendent as a member of the board, and we also always have a member of the teacher’s union and the principal’s union. We have three voices at the table that are direct links to the school district, and we think that that’s so important. We also have a school board policy on the books so that the school board is aware of the existence of the Education Foundation and the relationship is made clear through that policy.
Instead of the foundation board sitting around and talking about what we think ought to be funded within Portland’s public schools, we work very closely with district-based staff to understand the priorities of the district and make sure that what we’re raising money for aligns closely with the goals of the district. Of course, the decisions for what to fund happen with all 12 board members at the table. Like I said, the voice of the principal, the teacher, and the superintendent are there helping to guide that decision making and I think it’s so important.
Lisa Belisle: From what I understand, there is one very interesting and creative initiative that has been going on through a partnership with the Portland Education Foundation, and that has been the Culture Club.
Kate Snyder: Portland Education Foundation is the fiscal agent for Culture Club-Portland. Culture Club-Portland is a consortium of arts organizations in Portland. It’s the Portland Museum of Art, Portland Stage, the Symphony Orchestra, and Portland Ovations. Those four arts organizations work with Portland’s public schools to provide access to all students, K through 12, to arts experiences.
We are in our fourth year right now. Culture Club-Portland was triggered by the incredible generosity of an anonymous donor who worked with the arts organizations to promote arts access for kids in Portland, recognizing that there are world class arts programming that is right around the corner from so many of our schools in Portland, but not all students may have access to those institutions. The goal of the program is that each child, K-12, in Portland’s public schools will have at least one point of access with each one of the arts organizations every year that they’re a student. Ideally, each student goes to an arts organization four times every year that they’re a student in Portland’s public schools.
Lisa Belisle: Given that your organization has been around for a little more than a year in its current form and the Culture Club has been around for four years, I’m assuming that some sort of evolution is taking place, as far as the funding and administration of this. What is that going to look like?
Kate Snyder: PEF stepped in about a year ago as a partner at the table to work with both the arts organizations and the school district to help identify opportunities for improvement and also sustainability. This past year, we pulled together a group called the Culture Club-Portland Ad Hoc Committee. What this group did was they looked at “where are we now?” We had a principal at the table and a teacher at the table, we had some parents, we had folks from a central office at the school district, and also people from the arts organizations. The questions before us had to do with: What are we doing? How are we doing it? How can we improve?
That group actually yielded a report that generated ten recommendations for improvement. All of those recommendations are being acted on right now. How do we improve communications between the arts organizations and the schools? How do we get more kids accessing the arts organizations against the goal? It’s an incredible opportunity in Portland and the school district sees it, the arts organizations see it, and everybody’s at the table.
One role that PEF is playing is to try to continue to keep folks together at the table to talk about funding sustainability. We now have a steering committee that’s working together to identify, what are the needs, financially, moving forward, and how are we going to meet those needs? I mentioned earlier that there’s an anonymous donor who has helped to support Culture Club-Portland, and just recently in the news, it was announced that we have kind of a pathway forward that anticipates future funding. In this current year, there’s $200,000 to support Culture Club funding, as there has been in the last couple of years. Next year, there’s going to be $150,000 worth of funding, and the following year, $100,000 worth of funding.
We’re so lucky to have a runway in front of us so that we can see, over the next couple of years, how we need to ramp up additional funding to round out the funding that supports Culture Club-Portland. Then beyond that, how do we move forward so that we’re not doing fundraising here and there for all the years to come. Ideally, we would create some kind of an endowment or a plan for funding that allows Culture Club-Portland to grow and be sustained within the school district.
Lisa Belisle: That’s not an unusual occurrence that an organization or an individual donor would make a significant donation and then do it in kind of a step-down way so that it kind of gets things started and then it allows other funds to come in and replace what is no longer being donated.
Kate Snyder: That’s right. Actually, that’s one of the big challenges, I think, associated with this kind of work, is every year the funding is new funding, and so Culture Club is a little bit unique in our realm because we do have that runway, we can see one source of funding and where it’s going to go over the next couple of years, but every year that we’re generating funds for the Teacher Grant Program, for example, it’s new every year. Just because an individual or a corporation or a foundation gave us money in this fiscal year, it doesn’t mean that’s going to happen next year. We have to make sure that we’re developing the relationships and we’re cultivating the relationships and that we’re making sure that the donors feel that they’re valued and that their money is being well used.
Every year is a new year. You may be lucky enough to get some multi-year grants or some multi-year gifts. I don’t think that we can count on that, and so we’re always building strategies against the year we’re in and then the years to come.
Lisa Belisle: How much do you work with other local education foundations. I know that Cape Elizabeth has had a well-established one for quite some time, Yarmouth, Cumberland, Falmouth. Do you have conversations with people who are involved in those education foundations?
Kate Snyder: Well, during the research phase of how to establish Portland’s Education Foundation, we did have some conversations and we tried to do some information gathering and some learning about how different education foundations structure themselves and work with the school district and engage their community. We were lucky enough to be able to reach out to communities around us and ask some questions. We also reached out beyond Maine and looked for cities that look a little bit like Portland, in terms of demographic makeup and size, and tried to get a sense of some of the strategies that are employed in those places. I would say that there were half a dozen or so models that we really studied and tried to pick and choose what we thought would work best for Portland.
With only one year under our belt, we’ve been pretty Portland-focused. Part of that, I think, has to do with the fact that the school system in Portland is quite big, and as I mentioned earlier, there’s a lot of fundraising already happening within Portland’s public schools. We have many elementary schools, three middle schools, three high schools, an arts and technology school, adult ed, and multi-lingual. We’ve got a pretty big umbrella that is Portland public schools, and so right now, we’re working to make sure that we’re fitting within the fundraising landscape in Portland appropriately and in a way that feels like a support to the whole district and that everybody understands.
Lisa Belisle: What types of responses have you gotten from the people that have benefited?
Kate Snyder: Like the teachers who have received grants?
Lisa Belisle: Yeah.
Kate Snyder: Very positive responses. I think that any time that there is capacity brought to the school district, in terms of funding, that helps educators do what they do, it’s positively received. The thing is that educators aren’t employed to raise money. They’re employed to engage with students and teach students. The money for the budget comes in through the district, and the superintendent manages the budget process, and any time there are additional funds to bring to the table. Everybody from the superintendent all the way through the ranks of the school district, I think, are happy to know that that’s available and it’s forthcoming.
Lisa Belisle: Well, this has been very interesting for me. I appreciate that people are out in the community working with the public school systems in various capacities. I think it’s great whenever we can bring whatever it is that we do best ourselves and bring it to the table so that it can benefit our children and the teachers and the people who work within the school system. I thank you, Kate, for coming in today. We’ve been speaking with Kate Snyder who serves as the Executive Director of the Portland Education Foundation, which is an independent non-profit corporation whose mission is to raise philanthropic support for the Portland public schools.
I congratulate you on one year of being done, officially, in this capacity. I see bright things ahead, and I hope that things continue to go well for you and the foundation.
Kate Snyder: Thank you.