Sand castle contest caught in political net Annual Ocean Beach fundraiser off because of budget deadlock

Students work on sand castles with local architects and designers on Ocean Beach during the 2011 contest. Students work on sand castles with local architects and designers on Ocean Beach during the 2011 contest. Photo: Thomas Webb, The Chronicle Photo: Thomas Webb, The Chronicle Image 1 of / 14 Caption Close Sand castle contest caught in political net 1 / 14 Back to Gallery

The federal government shutdown has washed away - at least for now - a long-standing sand castle contest that raises money for arts programs at public schools.

The contest was to take place Saturday at San Francisco's Ocean Beach, with teams from 26 public elementary schools collaborating with adults from design-related firms to build fantastical structures of water and sand.

But the 30th annual contest was postponed "indefinitely" on Tuesday. The beach is part of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, which has furloughed most of its employees and revoked all event permits until there's a resolution of the standoff in Washington, D.C., over funding for the 2013-14 federal budget.

"We are in purgatory right now," said Julie MacDonald, executive director of Leap, the San Francisco nonprofit that uses the contest as a fundraiser to support its art education programs in Bay Area schools. "We have every intention of holding the event, but we're powerless to reschedule until the government is fully operational."

A GGNRA official working Tuesday, on reduced hours, was apologetic.

"With no appropriated funds for the year, we're not allowed to incur costs on behalf of the government," said Alexandra Picavet of the federal agency based at Fort Mason. "This is a terrific event on so many counts, but we don't have the authority to allow permitted events that require (park ranger) staffing."

While the focus at Ocean Beach this weekend would have been fun in the surf, the payoff is serious business.

Last year's event raised $253,000 for Leap, or nearly half that organization's budget. The money - donations from the firms that register to take part in the event - is used to hire artists to work with students at elementary schools in Alameda, San Francisco and San Mateo counties.

For now, Leap is proceeding on the assumption that as soon as the shutdown ends, the event will be moved to another date. There are no plans to scale back on the programs that so far are set to place artists in 20 elementary schools for extended periods of time.

However, if the event is pushed back to the spring, companies might decide not to take part, cutting into revenues. A spring event also could hamper fundraising efforts for future contests.

"Each program we create is customized to serve the needs of each school," MacDonald said. "Schools don't have the resources to hire their own artists and plan the programs."

At John Yehall Chin Elementary School in San Francisco's Chinatown, two artists will be visiting classes on a weekly basis from January until the end of the school year. One will teach watercolor to kids in kindergarten through third grades. The other will work with fourth- and fifth-grade students on Chinese painting.

"These sessions always add so much" to the education of young children, many of them families of immigrants, said Chin's principal, Allen Lee. "They get to utilize their creativity, learn skills, but also learn to work with each other."

That's not the case in Washington, where Republican hostility to federal health care reform led the House of Representatives to refuse to approve a federal budget for the fiscal year beginning Oct. 1. The GOP-led House has since voted to fund specific government efforts, including the National Park Service, but President Obama and the Democratic-led Senate are opposed to piecemeal relief for certain high-visibility programs.

"This is an opposites lesson, how not to behave," Lee said of the shutdown, which now has moved to threats to let the nation go into default on its loans. "They all should act like grown-ups."