Making good on an earlier pledge, a volunteer fundraising committee for the State College public schools effectively disbanded itself Thursday.
All 12 members of the Citizens Advisory Committee for Private Fundraising submitted their resignations to the State College Area school board and district Acting Superintendent Michael Hardy after a morning meeting.
Their resignations came in response to the school district’s expected elimination of its full-time development-specialist position, outgoing CAC Chairwoman Nancy VanLandingham said. Five of the nine school-board members said Monday they support that proposed job cut — part of several million dollars in planned expense cuts district-wide.
VanLandingham told the school board in March that the CAC’s members would resign together if the development-specialist job were axed. Created in 2006, it is the district’s sole full-time, paid fundraising position. Karen Burke-Crawford holds the job, which pays a listed $65,000 a year and had been teamed with the CAC to build money-raising efforts.
‘We just feel like we didn’t have a choice (except resignation) if the administration feels that fundraising is truly something they want to put on the back burner right now because of the financial crisis,’ VanLandingham said in an interview Thursday.
She said the district has secured nearly $3 million through private fundraising since the full-time development job was established. That marks a substantial uptick from prior years, VanLandingham said. The private funds have helped fuel a wide variety of school functions, from scholarships to library support, extracurricular activities and environmental education.
The development-specialist position itself focuses substantially on developing relationships, identifying and connecting with parties who may be interested in supporting the public schools, VanLandingham said.
‘We were making great strides,’ she said. ‘I’m very disheartened by this turn of events. I think this puts us a step behind everybody else, and that saddens me.
‘I think the State College school district has been a leader in a lot of ways,’ she continued. ‘I don’t know that we can be right now.’
District leadership, approached about the matter Thursday, responded with a written statement from board Vice President Jim Pawelczyk. It reads:
‘Citizens Advisory Committees are the board’s volunteer advisors and consultants. They help the board fulfill its statutory responsibility for making decisions which will affect the school system. When the district is asking everyone to do more with limited means, I am saddened that some members of the committee may choose other venues to contribute their vast talents. I am very appreciative of their service, and I hope that all members of our community will continue to support the good work of the’ State College Area School District.
Pawelczyk joined fellow board members Richard Bartnik, Penni Fishbaine, Ann McGlaughlin and Chris Small to support the planned fundraising-job cut. Hardy has said that the district can split fundraising responsibilities among other administrators.
Bartnik, who served as a liaison to the CAC, said it was ‘patently obvious’ to him that the board’s expectations for the fundraising office was beyond the operation’s abilities.
The board had set a $5 million annual fundraising target for the development operation, one outgoing CAC member told StateCollege.com Thursday.
‘In my opinion, having one person do it doesn’t accomplish what we need to do,’ Bartnik said at the Monday board meeting. ‘If you’ve got one person who’s not going to accomplish the task, then why do you have one person?’
Fellow board member David Hutchinson soon responded: ‘I don’t know how you’re going to accomplish it with zero people.’
‘I think this position provides resources,’ said board member Jim Leous, who, like Hutchinson, has favored retaining the development job. ‘I think we have a lot of community support through our Citizens Advisory Committee for Private Fundraising. I wouldn’t want that to go away.’
Fishbaine, though, reiterated that the board has asked the school administration to keep anticipated staffing cuts ‘away from the classroom and students’ as much as possible.
‘We’re trying to keep’ that charge in mind, Fishbaine said.
Reached Thursday, outgoing CAC member Mary Dupuis was blunt:
‘This board does not value what we’re doing,’ Dupuis said. Board members have sent mixed signals, setting high fundraising targets while also planning to undermine the money-raising operation, she said.
‘At this point, what it should say to the community is that they haven’t really got their priorities straight,’ Dupuis said. She said CAC members think the board may harbor an agenda that hasn’t ‘come to the surface’ yet.
‘We feel that we’re really ready to move on,’ Dupuis added. She also said that several key district administrators involved in the budget-cut discussions ‘really don’t know the district well.’
But because administrators — and not board members — have developed the budget-cut proposals, the board can maintain ‘plausible deniability’ and say it’s simply following administrative guidance, Dupuis said.
And that, she said, ‘is horse manure.’
Said VanLandingham: ‘I really didn’t want to resign. I don’t think anyone on the committee really wanted to resign. I think we’re in a really good spot right now to be moving ahead with new ideas, strong ideas.
‘It’s pretty disheartening that I think they’re going to have to go back to square one and start the CAC all over again.’
Earlier coverage
