And so it begins

I've written about the budget crunch facing public schools, with the immediate iteration being kicked off by the subprime mortgage crisis. There were a couple of stories in today's ASCD SmartBrief that hinted at the types of responses we may start to see:

• The LA Times has an op-ed discussing parents at an LA school passing the hat to make up for a $180,000 shortfall, raising $30,000 in a single night. "Get out your checkbooks, parents were told. All those wrapping-paper sales and pancake fundraisers wouldn't be enough. We could either pony up some hard cash, or see Ivanhoe's standing as one of L.A. Unified's best schools threatened."
• An article in The State (Columbia, SC) shows another angle: a bill in the state legislature to ban the sale of snack foods is voted down because schools need that revenue. "Some Greenville high schools earn as much as $70,000 annually from vending machine sales, said Quentin Cavanagh, marketing and training specialist for Greenville County schools. 'None of (the principals) want to sell this stuff. But they need the revenue,' Cavanagh told the House panel."

Raising funds through available channels is a clear first step; but as the problem gets bigger, and stretches out into the future, It's going to take more - a lot more. Partnership people, get ready for the knock on your door, if you haven't heard it already...