With all the challenges surrounding public school district budgets, it’s hard to zero in on the very particular line that separates the funding required for basic school district operations and funding that sets students up for true excellence.
In a school district like Manchester Essex Regional School District (MERSD) with 1,200 students in four schools—Manchester Memorial Elementary, Essex Elementary School, Manchester Essex Middle School, and Manchester Essex Regional High School—that line is hotly debated every budget season.
Even in the face of the district’s steady rise up coveted lists of high performing Massachusetts schools, pressure on funding persists. Is foreign language necessary at the elementary school level? How about music, or a big roster of AP courses? Do we need Debate, or Model UN programs? And what about Robotics?
“We see our mission as continuing the legacy of great public schools in Manchester and Essex,” said Lindsay Banks, SEF’s grant director. “It’s about fulfilling the potential of our students and that can look different in each community.”
For the new slate of SEF board members like Banks, comprised of highly engaged Essex and Manchester parents, it’s not enough.
SEF holds two fundraisers a year, including “Night of the Stars,” the annual performing arts show scheduled for Nov. 2 and its “Golden Hornet” fundraiser where students and families nominate members of school district staff for awards. (In 2024, the Diamond Hornet went to Maria Schmidt, administrative assistant at Manchester Memorial.)
This year, SEF board has been creating a plan to boost fundraising so it can broaden and deepen its impact, and put the fund on par with neighboring school districts. The group has been busy benchmarking area ed funds and comparing their progress to SEF. In FY22, according to IRS charity filings, SEF had $111,841 in assets. That same year, Newburyport Education Fund reported $1.74 million; Gloucester Education Foundation $2.59 million; and Hamilton Wenham $2.97 million.
“I came into a well-established, well-funded organization, despite joining during the Covid pandemic,” explains Emily Siegel executive director of the Gloucester Education Foundation (GEF), founded in 2007 and that raises $500,000-$700,000 per year from donations and targeted grants.
Last year GEF funded a spectrum of arts programs as well as hard-hitting programs like automotive tech that received a $50,000 GEF grant. Siegel, who arrived to GEF in 2021 after 15 years in education, said one of the benefits of a vibrant education fund lies in the district’s power to prove its commitment to public education to prospective teachers, even in years when the operational budget is fiercely debated.
The key, said Siegel, is to fund items that truly fall between the cracks of traditional budgets, and not funding items that properly belong in a public school’s core operating budget.
That’s a critical point, agreed Banks, who commends MERSD Superintendent Pam Beaudoin for maintaining “fiscal hygiene.” For instance, while other Massachusetts districts experienced a rude awakening last year when federal and state Covid funding ran out because they’d deployed those funds for non-Covid-related operations, MERSD was fine because it hadn’t.
The SEF board announced it would raise $1.5 million over the next 10 years to address gaps in public school funding. And they weren’t alone. The passage of Proposition 2½ in 1980 capped increases in local tax property, creating shortfalls for public schools. A wave of ed funds followed over the next decade, from Lexington (which today has $5 million in assets) to Brookline and Ipswich to support programs that were underfunded or on the chopping block.
The good news was SEF was consistent in fundraising. The bad news is it wasn’t enough to get to a true “endowment” level—that $1+ million level where interest income generated provides a strong base for annual grant giving.
Regionalization of the Manchester and Essex schools in 2001 marked a significant turning point, presenting an opportunity for SEF to expand its mission to support students in both towns. Before regionalization, SEF raised $10,000-$15,000 per year and funded programs like “Le Petite Corale,” an elementary choral program run by a Memorial School teacher.
Mona Eliassen Taliaferro was SEF’s cochair during much of those years. The founder of a successful IT consulting firm, Talliaferro represented a business mindset shared by others on the SEF board. They created new fundraisers like “Lobsters for Learning” a beach party that engaged a new generation of families. And it worked. Fundraising became more robust, often hitting $100,000 in a year, impressive even by today’s standards, and allowed SEF to spearhead progressive STEM initiatives like an early education computer lab at the elementary lab with computers, software, and programs.
“At the time, we had great group of people that brought new energy to the work,” Taliaferro said, pointing to many in the SEF board and orbit like SEF co-chair Susan Leavitt, SEF treasurer Sue Evans, Susan Beckmann, Sarah Creighton, and Jay Bothwick, among others. “Before that, there were areas of the fund that were dormant. We were able to change that.”
Along with Banks, volunteers like Michelle Kempskie, Michelle Kenney, Jessica Lamothe, Brooke Orr, Lisa Manganiello, Kathryn Taylor, Sarah Wolf, Maile Madigan, Betsy McKeen, Ryann Hilton, Alicia Palmer, Wendy Brady, Jen Mayer, Veronica Wu, Tracey Morgan, Sarah Chamberlain, and Sarah Conway are on the same page. They represent strong ties into both Essex and Manchester, and they’re focused on bringing SEF to an endowment level of funding, and use that to get off the hamster wheel of annual fundraising and use that breathing room to find new avenues, new programs, new partnerships that offer real impact that augments, rather than replaces, proper public school funding.
That’s a formula they know will work, because it’s worked in other districts.
“The power of education funds is the ability to allow school districts to go above and beyond,” said Emily Siegal. “That’s the goal.”
