The 2026-27 school year is close at hand, and fundraising is shaping up to be a critical issue. On Sept. 8, the Bend-La Pine Schools board of directors will present updates to a hotly debated fundraising policy, first released in June for community review. Parents objected to several policy pieces, including those pertaining to gift reporting, what level on involvement students can have in fundraising activities and discussion of a centralized account that some feared meant monies raised at one school would be transferred to support another.
The new fundraising approach at local schools is a move by district officials to “close the gap” with respect to student experiences. Fundraising by parent groups often supports classroom supplies, activities and extracurriculars. However, like many districts, schools within BLPS vary greatly in the amount of money they and their associated parent-teacher organizations can raise. Some raise a little; some a lot — and that poses sensitive questions about equity in public schools. Meanwhile, local organizations are addressing funding deficits by raising money for field trips.
Kinsey Martin, BLPS executive director of policy & advocacy, first discussed the district’s new draft fundraising policy at the board’s April 14 meeting, saying the district wanted to ensure all students, “have an enriching experience, and we do right by them.”
Of the 19 elementary and K-8 BLPS schools, two don’t have PTOs, Martin said. Additionally, many of the area high schools have clubs, groups and teams that fundraise specifically for their activities.
In other districts, such as Portland Public Schools, officials in the past attempted to address potential inequities by directing any funds over a certain amount to a district-wide pot of money that all schools can access, however, under that model, fundraising seemed to decline. Some local parents worry implementing a similar process in BLPS would pull dollars from programs that worked hard to fundraise.
The BLPS draft policy released in June created a flurry of emails and meetings among parents who objected to several points, including the concept of a centralized district fundraising account, concerned that meant one school’s dollars raised could be funneled to support another school. Also contested was the level in which students can participate in fundraising — which is governed by another policy — specifically about whether can directly solicit donations, and how schools and PTO organizations report donations and gifts. The initial draft called for reporting of all donations and gifts, while the new draft stipulates only donations greater than $2,000 must be reported.
Martin said there’ll continue to be input recorded for at least another month, if not longer. The school board doesn’t vote on district administrative policies, she explained. Draft policies are released for community review through board meeting packets, and comments are solicited and addressed, where applicable. Martin said it’s possible the board could ratify the fundraising policy at its Oct. 13 meeting, but it’s not a given. It depends on how much community input the district receives after releasing the updated draft.
“If we start not getting as much feedback, we know we’re getting closer, and then we might finalize them in October,” said Martin, the district’s primary facilitator for the policy. “But if we put something out one month, and we’re still getting a ton of movement and feedback, we’ll push out the adoption of those. So, we’ll see how people feel about this next round.”
Taelor Little, president of the Highland Magnet School at Kenwood School Parent-Teacher Organization, was instrumental in coalescing multiple people, representing approximately 20 BLPS parent-teacher organizations, to review and request changes to the draft policy after its initial June release. She feels the new draft is a step in the right direction.
“I think there have been some big improvements in this draft compared to the initial one we got,” said Little. “Is it perfect? No, but I think we’ve definitely got better wording, and it’s vastly better than it was. There’s still some stuff we’d like to get changed, but overall, we’re at a much better place than where we started.”
Little said clarification is still necessary around the definition of student involvement in fundraising and reporting of gifts. Depending on the definition of student involvement, a fundraising body might have to adhere to additional state policies or change how they fundraise. The question then becomes whether students are removed from fundraising directly or whether groups need to request approval for students to participate. If the latter occurs, parents want clarification on the cadence for requesting district approval, as the time it takes to gain district approval could potentially preclude students from participating. Parents were also concerned about the suggestion of required reporting for all donations.
“In the reading of that, would we have had to fill out the form for every box of crayons and every bag of goldfish that was donated?” Little said, calling that “hugely unworkable. In the new iteration, that bar is $2,000. And donations or gifts under $2,000 don’t need to be reported to the district.”
Additionally, there are other, more minor policy points that parents feel are open to interpretation. Little said, “Trust us” was the district’s response. But parents want specifics in writing.
“There are a fair amount of schools that still want clarifications to be written down rather than just a verbal agreement or a ‘We wouldn’t interpret that that way,’” Little said.
In late June, the combined group that Little united drafted a press release expressing its belief that the policy would “allow donations for individual schools to be placed into district-controlled accounts, require district approval for certain expenditures, prohibit funding for some educational activities currently supported by parent organizations, and allow unspent locally raised funds to be transferred into the district’s general fund under certain circumstances.”
However, the new draft’s language addresses those misperceptions, Martin said. There is a “mush pot” as Martin refers to it, that she said is a general account not tied to any school or group. If a business or organization wants to donate broadly, that’s where the money goes. The district is asking that schools and PTOs include information about that account on flyers and when solicitating donations or hosting events. Martin stressed that request, and subsequent donations, aren’t mandatory. Rather, Martin said, it’s a way to make donators aware that they can give more broadly and not just to a particular group or activity.
“Last year, one of our high school girls’ softball teams desperately needed an outfield fence and didn’t have access to the donations and sponsorships that some of our other high schools have through business connections and neighborhoods,” Martin said. “We had donors who said, ‘If I had known that I would have donated to them, but the district never told us that these programs had other needs.’”
Martin said there will be a group of district, community and student members that decides where the centralized account monies are distributed. She also stressed that the initial draft of the new fundraising policy was never intended to be released and ratified immediately. She said a “kind of telephone game” occurred after the draft’s June release, and as information was relayed, it became skewed.
“We would never put out a policy and be, like, ‘We nailed it on the first try,’” Martin said, explaining district officials planned for conversations and revisions to continue throughout the summer. “There’s a delicate balance. These are school-district policies. We have to own them, and we have to make sure that everything in them meets our legal obligations and our financial obligations, but then we also want community input and community co-drafting.”
Martin believes most issues the parent group raised will be addressed by the new draft. The fundraising policy was developed over two years, utilizing data from similar policies enacted in the U.S., input from seasoned policy developers and feedback from more than 100 community members at a dozen listening sessions. Martin said policy pieces pertaining to booster clubs and parent-teacher organizations have been moved to the bottom of the policy “so that it’s clearer that only this portion applies” to those groups. Additionally, the district will conduct training sessions about procedures and processes with respect to the new policy, and plan to invite representatives of parent groups and student leadership, and has a volunteer handbook that covers those, which it will disseminate.
Plethora of organizations raising funds as school year begins
Fundraising by parent and student groups is a key part of many extracurricular activities; meanwhile, dwindling district funding means traditional school-day events — such as field trips — have also become less common. With that in mind, several Central Oregon organizations are fundraising to support local students and staff. The field-trip fundraiser at Sunriver Nature Center & Observatory is one of several opportunities being offered to local educators.
In 2025, SNCO served 5,788 students on field trips. Roughly 66% of those were on full scholarships, according to Kayla Rotunno, SNCO development director, covering SNCO programming costs and transportation costs incurred by the teacher’s school. Rotunno said SNCO created the field-trip fundraiser last year, to support students traveling to SNCO and for its educational staff to go to schools. According to Rotunno, at least eight other organizations are doing fundraisers to support field trips.
“It seems like as school budgets tighten up, they cut the programs that are seen as extra, bonus, cherry-on-top type of programs.” Rotunno said. “They have to spend the funds that they have on in-classroom learning, which, of course, we understand. But we, as a field-trip provider, want kids to get the immersive, hands-on type of learning that they get when they’re on a field trip.”
The SNCO fundraiser supports all field-trip costs, including the programming staff, district bus-rental costs, and, where necessary, hiring a substitute teacher to cover the teacher accompanying the field trip. Teachers can reach out to SNCO and request scholarships. Rotunno said SNCO field trips engage students’ minds around science-based topics
“There’s less science being taught in classrooms. A lot of the No Child Left Behind and standardized tests and everything are so reading- and math-focused,” Rotunno said. “The amount of time spent on science has dropped significantly, because they are teaching to the tests. They have to. We’re not faulting teachers for that, but it just is a reality that kids are not learning as much science as they used to.”
Katie Eskeldson-Kaiser, SNCO education programs manager, has been at the nonprofit organization for five years. She said the Covid-19 pandemic indirectly impacted field trips.
“Covid really kind of shook everything up as far as how many programs were happening,” Eskeldson-Kaiser said. “Before Covid, we had a very full program calendar, and then it definitely shifted as people tried to figure out new learning goals post-Covid. We still get a lot of requests, but we’ve also been very proactive in trying to make it accessible for schools.”
She said there’s been a “substantial drop” in the number of schools that SNCO is serving, which stems from changes to educational criteria and funding shifts away from field trips and extracurriculars. SNCO has secured grants over the past several years, she said, which then were offset by schools “with robust PTOs that already do their own fundraising, which is a minority of the schools in Central Oregon.” Those schools can pay their own field-trip costs. Last year, the SNCO field-trip fundraiser raised $43,000. This year, Rotunno said they’re hoping to reach $50,000.
“What we are seeing is a significant uptick in scholarship requests,” Rotunno said. “More than half of the kids who came out on field trips last year were on scholarship, so more than 50% of the students we’re serving are on field trips for free because the community has stepped up to help pay for that. It’s amazing.”
A combined group of field-trip providers is also running a fundraiser, facilitated by Nature Connect. It includes Discover Your Northwest, High Desert Museum, Think Wild and Upper Deschutes Watershed Council. Eskeldson-Kaiser said SNCO collaborates with those and other groups to compare and analyze data pertaining to which schools “are being underserved and underrepresented in outdoor programming.” Those groups work together “to make sure we’re really reaching all of Central Oregon, not just Bend-La Pine School district, but also Redmond School District, Jefferson County and Crook County.”
Rotunno said there’s a misconception that field trips are funded and guaranteed, as they were many years ago, and that all area schools can afford them.
“There’s a ton of kids in schools here who cannot afford outdoor access. We have to really create opportunities for the kids to connect with nature, and be outside and learning outside, because that’s not the reality for a lot of families who live in Central Oregon,” she said, adding that schools from Culver, Gilchrist and Prineville also take field trips to SNCO.
“I think a lot of people who are the age to be donating to a campaign like this grew up going on field trips, and they think maybe the money is a given,” Rotunno added. “It’s not a given. There are kids who are not going on any field trips unless we, as field-trip providers, pay to make it happen. Our challenge is getting people to understand it’s not like it used to be.”
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