Janney PTA raised $1.4 million in one year

[Anonymous]

And if they'd returned calls from the Post they could have explained that.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:A very misleading amount as I know for certain the PTA did not raise half, a third, a fourth that amount! This exorbitant amount includes the budget for enrichment and after school care operations. The actual money raised by PTA is way less tha $1.4million.

CAP's source for the Janney fundraising data is the Form 990 Return of Organization Exempt from Income Tax. So if it wasn't $1.39M, then Janney PTA lied on its tax return.

On the 990 it states the $990K was program revenue. Since the before care, after care and enrichment is run through the PTA is it easy to see how they got to this #

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:And if they'd returned calls from the Post they could have explained that.

Or the post could have looked at the 990 and said - hmmm I would what this line is? Poor reporting!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:A very misleading amount as I know for certain the PTA did not raise half, a third, a fourth that amount! This exorbitant amount includes the budget for enrichment and after school care operations. The actual money raised by PTA is way less tha $1.4million.

CAP's source for the Janney fundraising data is the Form 990 Return of Organization Exempt from Income Tax. So if it wasn't $1.39M, then Janney PTA lied on its tax return.

The number includes the gross collected for aftercare and other after school programs that parents pay for which are organized by the PTA.

They didnt lie, rather the way the number is presented was intentionally misleading.

Non Janney parent here, but that totally makes sense. PTAs are often a pass through for the aftercare programs.

The number probably also includes gross auction receipts from the auction. Net receipts after expenses are 25% or less of the gross. A careful reporter would have discovered this.

[Anonymous]

Some districts pool their money - https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/08/us/california-pta-fund-raising-inequality.html?_r=0

While I would like to see DCPS acknowledge that more money is needed to fund schools properly, in the interim, it's morally not right to me that schools with less wealthy families have less money at their disposal. There's nothing equal about some schools having more dollars to use for their students than others.

[Anonymous]

If there's one thing that parents of every culture and every species will invest in - it's their children. If they don't, they're doing it wrong, and it's why their genes die out.

Trying to fight evolution through natural selection is pointless.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:A very misleading amount as I know for certain the PTA did not raise half, a third, a fourth that amount! This exorbitant amount includes the budget for enrichment and after school care operations. The actual money raised by PTA is way less tha $1.4million.

CAP's source for the Janney fundraising data is the Form 990 Return of Organization Exempt from Income Tax. So if it wasn't $1.39M, then Janney PTA lied on its tax return.

The number includes the gross collected for aftercare and other after school programs that parents pay for which are organized by the PTA.

They didnt lie, rather the way the number is presented was intentionally misleading.

If Janney parents donated the money so the school could offer after-school, it's still fundraising. Without the money, there would be no after-school program (or at least not a program open to all students, or until 6pm, etc.) The money is used to operate, or at least heavily supplement, the after-school program. Why wouldn't it be counted as fundraising?

You may think that "fundraising" should only be considered the discretionary money that the PTA uses on "fun things" like field trips, but that's not how fundraising (or how tax-exempt organizations' financial reporting) works.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:And if they'd returned calls from the Post they could have explained that.

Do you know that the post called? I heard one pta pres got an email only 2 hours before the deadline asking for comment. Not much lead time for a volunteer with a full time job. Its clear the reporter did not want facts to get in the way of a good story.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:A very misleading amount as I know for certain the PTA did not raise half, a third, a fourth that amount! This exorbitant amount includes the budget for enrichment and after school care operations. The actual money raised by PTA is way less tha $1.4million.

CAP's source for the Janney fundraising data is the Form 990 Return of Organization Exempt from Income Tax. So if it wasn't $1.39M, then Janney PTA lied on its tax return.

The number includes the gross collected for aftercare and other after school programs that parents pay for which are organized by the PTA.

They didnt lie, rather the way the number is presented was intentionally misleading.

If Janney parents donated the money so the school could offer after-school, it's still fundraising. Without the money, there would be no after-school program (or at least not a program open to all students, or until 6pm, etc.) The money is used to operate, or at least heavily supplement, the after-school program. Why wouldn't it be counted as fundraising?

You may think that "fundraising" should only be considered the discretionary money that the PTA uses on "fun things" like field trips, but that's not how fundraising (or how tax-exempt organizations' financial reporting) works.

I pay for aftercare. Its a service received like babysitting. It is not counted as a donation. I do not take a tax deduction for it.

Other schools have an outside program run aftercare. The parents get the same service, but it is accounted for differently because it is not coordinated by the pta. My kids are not getting any additional benefits because it is organized by the pta..

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I dont begrudge those schools. Title 1 schools may raise significantly less but they also get more govt dollars. Either way, the real heart of this is the commitment from parents. You could throw 1 mil at the worst performin elem in DC and I am not sure the test scores are going to jump all that much. It all comes down to what the parents are giving to the kids OUTSIDE of school unfortunately. And 1 million dollars isn't going to help that much.

This is the same argument as saying that political donations do not equal influence. If big donors—to schools or politicians—weren't getting a return on their investment, they wouldn't donate the money. You can argue about the degree to which they're getting a return, but saying the return is nonexistent is silly.

What a strange comparison. The PP is right that the money at a school's disposal has very little to do with the achievement gap. Besides, as others have pointed out, schools like Janney receive significantly less in public funds than schools serving a poorer population, so the parents have to make up for it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:A very misleading amount as I know for certain the PTA did not raise half, a third, a fourth that amount! This exorbitant amount includes the budget for enrichment and after school care operations. The actual money raised by PTA is way less tha $1.4million.

CAP's source for the Janney fundraising data is the Form 990 Return of Organization Exempt from Income Tax. So if it wasn't $1.39M, then Janney PTA lied on its tax return.

The number includes the gross collected for aftercare and other after school programs that parents pay for which are organized by the PTA.

They didnt lie, rather the way the number is presented was intentionally misleading.

If Janney parents donated the money so the school could offer after-school, it's still fundraising. Without the money, there would be no after-school program (or at least not a program open to all students, or until 6pm, etc.) The money is used to operate, or at least heavily supplement, the after-school program. Why wouldn't it be counted as fundraising?

You may think that "fundraising" should only be considered the discretionary money that the PTA uses on "fun things" like field trips, but that's not how fundraising (or how tax-exempt organizations' financial reporting) works.

It's a straight pass through for the aftercare program- not fundraising. If it costs $5K a year to pay for Larla's aftercare at Janney, you pay the PTA 5K and then the PTA pays the 5K to its providers. It's a service that goes through the PTA's bank account. It's not tax deductible at all. It's not a donation.

[Anonymous]

Whatever the actual numbers, DCPS needs to step up and provide a program that serves high-performing kids well. If they continue to fail to do that, then they have to allow PTAs to fill in the cracks. Otherwise, families will go private or go to the suburbs.

DCPS can easily close the achievement gap by having all the high-performing kids leave the system...

[Anonymous]

This does look like sloppy reporting. At our school, we pay the HSA for every field trip. So if 100 students pay $10 each to the HSA to go to the Natural History Museum, it would appear that the HSA "raised" $1000. Then if you figure there are 7 grades and each grade goes on roughly 10 trips a year, it now looks like the HSA raised $70,000. But that is not fundraising, that's me paying for my kid to go on a field trip.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:A very misleading amount as I know for certain the PTA did not raise half, a third, a fourth that amount! This exorbitant amount includes the budget for enrichment and after school care operations. The actual money raised by PTA is way less tha $1.4million.

CAP's source for the Janney fundraising data is the Form 990 Return of Organization Exempt from Income Tax. So if it wasn't $1.39M, then Janney PTA lied on its tax return.

The number includes the gross collected for aftercare and other after school programs that parents pay for which are organized by the PTA.

They didnt lie, rather the way the number is presented was intentionally misleading.

If Janney parents donated the money so the school could offer after-school, it's still fundraising. Without the money, there would be no after-school program (or at least not a program open to all students, or until 6pm, etc.) The money is used to operate, or at least heavily supplement, the after-school program. Why wouldn't it be counted as fundraising?

You may think that "fundraising" should only be considered the discretionary money that the PTA uses on "fun things" like field trips, but that's not how fundraising (or how tax-exempt organizations' financial reporting) works.

I pay for aftercare. Its a service received like babysitting. It is not counted as a donation. I do not take a tax deduction for it.

Other schools have an outside program run aftercare. The parents get the same service, but it is accounted for differently because it is not coordinated by the pta. My kids are not getting any additional benefits because it is organized by the pta..

You're describing a cost-neutral program. But the money taken in from parents by the PTA is still fundraising by the PTA. That is why it is reported as such on their tax forms. If you don't like how it's being perceived, then you should advocate to pay the provider directly in the future so as to not hit the Janney PTA books.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This does look like sloppy reporting. At our school, we pay the HSA for every field trip. So if 100 students pay $10 each to the HSA to go to the Natural History Museum, it would appear that the HSA "raised" $1000. Then if you figure there are 7 grades and each grade goes on roughly 10 trips a year, it now looks like the HSA raised $70,000. But that is not fundraising, that's me paying for my kid to go on a field trip.

If you didn't pay for the field trip, the field trip would not happen. That's fundraising. The fact that the amount of money raised is equal to the cost of the activity is irrelevant.