The rich get richer.
Parents at 132 public schools out of the city’s roughly 1,800 donated cash directly into the school’s operating budgets in the 2017-2018 academic year, according to a new report from the Independent Budget Office.
The donations straight from parents totaled $12.8 million — and schools with the highest parental boosts were in affluent neighborhoods including Park Slope and the Upper East Side.
The IBO’s numbers are separate from an error-riddled summary of PTA coffers issued by the Department of Education this week.
Those PTA funds can be used for a variety of school needs from supplies to trips.
But for specific purposes – like paying for a teacher’s salary – parents give directly to school budgets for payroll reasons, the IBO said.
“Generally, schools that enrolled fewer students living in poverty received more grant money from parent-teacher associations,” according to the report. “The two schools with the lowest poverty rates (6 percent and 7 percent) received roughly $437,000 and $727,000, respectively. In contrast, the school with the highest poverty rate (98 percent) in our study received a comparatively modest grant of $2,500.”
Parents at New Explorations in Science, Technology and Math on the Lower East Side, a top citywide gifted and talented school, topped the PTA budget boost list at $728,749, the report stated.
The PTA at P.S. 9 Sarah Anderson, also in Manhattan, topped off their school funds with an extra $647,842.
The study found that 79 percent of schools where PTAs contributed to budgets were screened and competitive.
The DOE’s five citywide gifted and talented schools received parent grants totaling roughly $2 million.
Manhattan’s high performing District 2 had the most schools benefiting from PTA grants with 31 for a total of $4,419,581 in 2017-2018, according to the report.
By contrast, only three schools in all five Bronx districts received parent budget funding for a meager total of $91,172.
Brooklyn’s District 15, which includes Park Slope, had PTA budget contributions of $2,448, 782, the third most out of all 32 city districts.
