The educational experience elementary school students in the Toronto public board receive increasingly appears to depend on where they live and how much their parents kick in.

Data obtained by the Star shows that schools in wealthy areas are taking in thousands of dollars from families to pay for extracurricular programs such as lunchtime yoga, magic classes and professional vocal coaches, as well as to build sports fields and playgrounds, while schools in poorer areas struggle to pay for basic nutrition programs.

The top 20 elementary schools — largely in wealthy neighbourhoods — raised a total of $3.9 million in the 2012-13 school year, money that doesn’t come from the board but flows to the school from fundraising and fees for everything from pizza lunches to Scholastic book sales to welcome-back barbecues. The bottom 20 schools accumulated only $43,249.23.

In total, the board’s 475 elementary and middle schools managed to bring in a total of $19.2 million in fundraising and school-generated funds in 2012-13 — an average amount of $118 per student, according to data obtained by the Star through a Freedom of Information request.

TDSB’s top fundraising schools

Nelson Mandela Park Public School in Regent Park took in just $11 per student, while Forest Hill, a large elementary school, raised hundreds of thousands of dollars in one year.

Meanwhile, the number of schools bringing in less than $100 per student increased between 2008 and the 2012-13 school year, widening the divide between have- and have-not schools — largely in areas of the city where average incomes have been stagnant or declined.

Mapped out, those schools follow a pattern similar to that shown by University of Toronto researcher David Hulchanski in his Three Cities report, which identified the growing divide between high- and low-income neighbourhoods in Toronto, as well as the disappearance of middle-class neighbourhoods.

TDSB fundraising map

That schools could become economically polarized as well “is the worry in education,” said Annie Kidder, executive director of the advocacy group People for Education. “And it is a really big worry. And I think it’s real.”

Parent councils in wealthy areas often fundraise for their school libraries, says Kidder, buying computers and books — even sharing the cost with the board of retrofitting an entire library, as the parent council at Jackman Avenue public school did in the 2012-13 school year.

In contrast, libraries in less affluent areas have books and computers that are out of date.

“It’s as if the poverty outside is reflected inside. And what you really want is the opposite,” said Kidder. “You want schools that don’t just mitigate the poverty outside, but actually are environments that say: You’re as important as everybody else, you have a chance to succeed just like everybody else, and we’re going to ensure you have a rich education in the broadest sense of that word.”

The province brought in new guidelines in May 2012, meant in part to increase transparency by requiring parent councils to report annually to parents on fundraising activities and expenditures. The loosely worded guidelines were also meant to reinforce that the money isn’t to be used to purchase curriculum materials, textbooks and for repairs, or to pay for capital projects that significantly increase operating costs.

Although fundraising and school-generated funds in the TDSB were down overall in 2012-13 from the year before, the guidelines have done little — as critics feared at the time — to rein in a two-tiered system where some schools can accumulate massive sums.

The influx of cash isn’t against the rules, but it leaves principals in wealthier schools with the advantage of spending their allocated dollars from the board on core curriculum materials instead of on items that can be purchased by parent councils with fundraised money.

In 2012-13, that list included guitars, electric pianos, LCD projectors, computers, gym equipment, fans for classrooms, smart boards, DVD players, bulletin boards, dictionaries, science equipment, entire playgrounds and sports fields, and outside enrichment in subjects such as science and art. Some schools top up the base amount a teacher has for materials, in once case, $300 per class.

Carla Kisko, an associate director of the TDSB, says all of the items are within board guidelines.

Just what the money is spent on is difficult to track because the way expenditures are reported differs from school to school. And some schools have registered charitable foundations, which means they are no longer required to report school fundraising to the TDSB.

“To me, the transparency piece is an important one for us,” says Kidder. “It goes to a fundamental question about how much are we assuming that we have to rely on parents to augment funding for education,” she says.

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“And even your total — the $118 (per student) — it’s like a user fee, practically. And one of the consequences of that, we have been told, is a sense that not everybody belongs in the system.”

Kidder doesn’t see a problem with raising money for charities such as the Terry Fox Run.

“This is not to slam fundraising completely,” she says. “It’s actually fun and a good way to engage people in the community.” But it’s the reliance of schools on such funds and the lack of transparency that are concerns, she said.

And some parent councils — such as that at Northlea Public School in Leaside — donate a portion of their fundraising to other schools, as they did in 2012-13, when the group gave $4,700 to Thorncliffe Park for a snack program.

The province recognizes that there are disparities among schools in the TDSB and gives the board $130 million annually for inner-city education.

But a lot of the money is taken out to cover underfunding of other costs — mainly heat and light, says long-time trustee Sheila Cary-Meagher.

The board also funds a Model Schools program, providing grants to 150 schools that score high on the Learning Opportunities Index based on factors such as the educational attainment and income of parents. The higher the score, the more the school needs help.

The funds pay for community workers, administrative staff and even educational programs for parents, such as an eight-week learn-to-cook course at George Brown.

A third of it — Cary-Meagher says about $20,000 — goes directly to schools to pay for equipment, training for teachers and to foster community engagement.

“When you consider what most schools can fundraise, $20,000 is mid- to low-range,” says Cary-Meagher.

Over the 28 years she has served on and off as a trustee, Cary-Meagher has seen everything from wealthier schools replacing entire playgrounds — “pretty staggering,” she says — to a principal who asked a parent council to replace a toilet. Cary-Meagher has a current project by a parent council to replace a sprinkler system in one of her schools.

But with a $3-billion repair backlog, and only $74 million from the province annually to fix the schools, Cary-Meagher asks, how “could we possibly ever catch up?”

One solution, Kidder suggests, is for the province to change its funding formula, a complex equation based on multiple factors such as a school’s square footage and the number of students.

The ministry could provide money based on an expanded list of items considered essential, things each school should have — a list Premier Kathleen Wynn helped shape years ago as one of the founders of the Metro Parent Network.

“We need an updated description of that,” says Kidder. “Are libraries an ‘extra’? Are playgrounds? Because that’s the one that parents fundraise for the most.

“Are we saying that it’s OK that in a high-income neighbourhood I have a really great playground (but) if I live in a low-income neighbourhood, I don’t?

“To me, there’s the divided city question: Which of these things are essential for education?” says Kidder. If they’re essential, she says, “they should be funded.”