EACH fall, parents at the Anderson School, a highly regarded K-8 on the Upper West Side for gifted and talented students, receive letters from the PTA emblazoned with the school’s elegant “A” logo. Though Anderson indulges in the usual trappings of public-school fund-raising — bake sales, book fairs, auctions — this letter is blunter: It urges parents to simply write a check. And it suggests an amount: This school year, it was $1,300.

Ayda Gibson, 44, the mother of a first grader at the school, said she did not mind being asked.

“If they don’t ask,” she said, “they won’t get.”

Many parents, it would seem, agree with her. In the 2009-10 school year, Anderson’s PTA and a much smaller alumni group raised $1,001,302, putting the school in a remarkable category — the New York City public schools that raise amounts in the $1 million range annually.

They are schools like Public School 6 on East 82nd Street, where big donors can have their children’s names engraved on plaques on chairs in the auditorium. Its PTA raised $973,518 last school year. Or P.S. 290, also on East 82nd, a popular school widely praised for its writing program, where the PTA raised $949,759 in the 2009-10 school year.