Crowdfunded public school programs fuel controversy

Curtis Wiebe has only been teaching for four years, but he's already an old hand when it comes to using technology to engage his Grade 6/7 students. But the way he and others like him are funding the necessary classroom equipment is making some people extremely uneasy.

"I'm not one to kind of teach out of the textbook," says the 32-year-old teacher at Crescent Park Elementary in Surrey, B.C.  

Wiebe is making his classroom a learning lab thanks to a set of small, programmable robots he recently received from a four-year-old Toronto-based charity called My Class Needs.

Next on his wish list: Virtual reality headsets to make learning literally out of this world for students, to realize his dream of helping his pupils experience what Mars is like.   

Wiebe is one of more than 1,750 Canadian public school teachers bringing extra learning resources into his classroom thanks to crowdfunding through an organization called My Class Needs. The charity says it has improved the learning environment for more than 88,000 kids in public schools in Canada

But critics say it's also furthering inequality in the public school system, and opening the door to letting private money replace government dollars.

Crowdfunding education

My Class Needs launched in 2012 and aims to give Canadian public school teachers like Wiebe a way to access resources that enhance their teaching.  

"We saw that there was an increasing need on the part of teachers to bridge the gap between the vision that they had in their classrooms for their students and the resources that they needed," says Amy Coupal, CEO of My Class Needs and herself a former public school teacher.

"When you can go to the dollar store and buy the resources that you need it's one thing, but when you're looking to get a 3D printer or robot … then you need additional help to get those resources in your class."

Teachers send a proposal to My Class Needs, with their resource wish list and their vision for how those resources will enhance their students' learning.   

"One of our main goals is to make that as easy and clear as possible for the teachers so that they can really focus on student learning," Coupal says.

If a teacher's pitch meets their school board's fundraising rules and eligibility guidelines, it's posted on the My Class Needs' website.  

Interested donors can contribute via the crowdfunding platform. My Class Needs also raises money for classrooms via corporate partnerships with companies such as Chevron RBC, Best Buy and Telus.  

So far, the charity says it has raised more than $2 million, with the majority of that spent in B.C.

Public vs. private funding

But the idea of private and corporate money putting resources like iPads and robotics equipment in the hands of a select group of schoolchildren has made some stakeholders in the public school system deeply uncomfortable.

Former B.C. provincial parent advisory council leader and public health expert Farah Shroff says this kind of fundraising takes pressure off governments to fund the public school systems properly.

"Once we start seeking private funding for what should be completely, 100 per cent publicly funded, we move down the slippery slope," she says.

"When the teacher very, very passionately says 'My children need more resources in this classroom and so I'm going to take the resources from wherever those resources come,' they're making a pragmatic decision to be able to do their job better," Shroff says. "In the longer term and in the bigger picture, those kinds of decisions slowly lead us to make very dangerous decisions about our education."

British Columbia Teachers Federation president Glen Hansman believes MCN's crowdfunding model and corporate partnerships are a step in the wrong direction in a publicly funded system.

"Given how poorly the public education system has been funded here in this province, these things (crowdfunding initiatives) have just expanded and taken off. We're very concerned that that's just furthering an inequitable learning experience for students around the province," he says.

Hansman points out that according to the most recent Statistics Canada numbers, B.C. ranked at the bottom among all provinces and territories for total money spent per student in Canada in 2013/2014.    

Funding for public education as a proportion of provincial government spending has been declining for the past 16 years, from 20 per cent in 2000-2001 to 11.85 per cent in 2015-2016. That's fostering an environment where teachers will go to any lengths to get learning materials into their classrooms, which is why the majority of My Class Need's activity has been in British Columbia, he says.

"Students should be able to count on a well-funded, well-resourced public education school with lots of opportunities for them regardless of where they live in the province - not just on whether or not their teacher has been successful through a grant writing proposal or through a crowdfunding exercise," according to Hansman.

He says if a corporation has money it wants to spend in public school classrooms, it should give it to the school boards whose publicly elected trustees can decide which schools and classrooms need it the most.

"There need to be checks and balances for how this is done and to make sure that resources are distributed equitably."

Public-private buffer

Coupal, meanwhile, insists that My Class Needs acts as a buffer between the classroom and donor.

"Our role is really to work with the teachers who have those amazing project ideas and to take corporate funding and apply it to the projects that the teachers have," she says. "So that when their project gets funded, what they get is a box of whatever they've asked for at their school. That's where we really come in, as being the intermediary matching those funds with those classroom projects."

One of the charity's first corporate partnerships was with Chevron Canada, which asked My Class Needs to administer its Fuel Your School program in B.C., which focuses on science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) learning.  

The program raised both $1.8 million for public schools and public controversy in B.C. when it ran between 2013 and 2017.  

Vancouver's school board refused to give its blessing to the program despite running a multimillion-dollar deficit.  The BC Teachers Federation passed a motion in 2014 opposing it.

But others school boards like Surrey were happy to take the donation.   

Doug Strachan, the board's communication manager, says corporate funding like Chevron's does have a place in public schools, as long it meets the Board's guidelines that include rules on no logos or branding in classroom.

"Our board's approach is: Why close that door?" says Doug Strachan, communications manager for the Surrey School Board.

"There are people and there are businesses entities that want to support public education, and our board believes that's a good thing.  We make the best use of it on our terms."

Meanwhile, Wiebe recently received more than $1,000 worth of robotics equipment from a corporate program administered by My Class Needs, his fourth successful pitch to one of its corporate partnership programs.

Each of those pitches was made with the support of his school board.

His motivations are clear: "At the end of the day you're going to do what you have to do as a teacher to get the resources to make sure that there is really great learning taking place in your classroom. And I think that's what every teacher strives for."