Ramsey International Fine Arts tells parents: Keep your money

By KATHRYN NELSON, Star Tribune
The parents of the Ramsey International Fine Arts Center Foundation have donated more than $280,000 to their school in south Minneapolis in the past dozen years.

That still wasn't worth the aggravation to school officials.

In a rare move, the Minneapolis School District sent a letter to the foundation, telling its leaders not to contact school staff, administration or the principal about fundraising issues. The principal sent a letter halting the annual Read-a-Thon and Plant Sale fundraisers for the foundation.

"They're treating us like we don't matter," foundation president Kristin Rigg said.

Many Minneapolis schools have similar parent fundraising foundations, but none has had as much trouble as Ramsey, said Associate Superintendent Craig Vana.

Officials with the state association of parent-teacher groups agreed that such disputes are rare in Minnesota.

The public dispute follows years of disagreements between parents and school officials over how fundraising money is spent. The dispute has persisted through changes of principals and parent leaders.

Parents say school officials failed to account for the donations they were given. School officials say parents tried to interfere with how the money was spent. Unable to agree, both parties are now communicating through lawyers.

At a time when parent fundraising is becoming an ever more important asset to public schools, the standoff is stunning to outsiders.

"It's ridiculous," said Roberta McCue, who was picking up her granddaughter Savannah Ness, 13, from Ramsey last week.

"We don't have any books. We have to share," Savannah chimed in from the backseat of the car.

School board member Tom Madden said he met with members of the foundation and the parent-teacher organization (PTO) last year, but they didn't take him up on his offer of help.

"This is a very unusual situation," he said. "There's certainly room for improvement on both sides."

Still, he is optimistic that a truce can be reached. "I suspect that the differences aren't that great and they can be worked out," he said. "Things are never one-sided, period."

Strong feelings, strong letter

Money from the foundation has been used to support a school opera, to buy band and gym equipment and to pay for museum visits. But foundation officials said they suspected that the school had used some of it to pay for a teaching position. District officials flatly deny that.

The conflict intensified last fall when Ramsey Principal Karen Hart wrote that she would no longer support foundation events that used school resources, including students. The scheduled February Read-a-thon, which had been managed by the foundation since the 1990s was put on hold.

Vana sent foundation leaders a letter in late November stating that the school's officials "have been directed to focus their energy on academic achievement. They are not to be distracted by the ongoing fundraising issues."

Foundation treasurer Carol Peterson and Rigg were told "not to contact the principal, staff, or members of the site council about issues related to the Foundation."

Both the foundation and the PTO filed grievances to the school's site council, a group of teachers, parents and school officials.

The PTO's grievance stated that money raised by the foundation was to be spent within a year. Because the school did not spend all the money, the remainder should be returned to the foundation. Receipts for expenses have not been turned over either, Peterson said.

"We're donors to this school, and as donors we can restrict how the money is spent," Rigg said. "You are obliged to be accountable to that."

Both grievances were reviewed and rejected, said Margaret Westin, the district general counsel.

More trouble than most

David Curle, foundation treasurer at nearby Clara Barton Open School, said there haven't been any major conflicts between his school and foundation.

"Frankly," he said, "I think [the situation at Ramsey] really is isolated."

Sandy Zarembinski, of the Minnesota PTA, said most schools and fundraising groups cooperate for the benefit of students, but issues can arise.

Sometimes parents want control over the money because they worked to collect it. Administrators may want to use it to solve problems with state funding. Principals, she said, can also be pressured by the district to control funds that may not legally be theirs.

"Sometimes, it's who can throw the bigger temper tantrum," she said.

Can this problem be solved?

Rigg moved her children to another Minneapolis public school last year, but will finish out her foundation term in late 2008.

"I feel like my commitment to the foundation was really separate from my commitment to my children's education," she said.

Asked why the district can't make peace with a group that has raised so much money, Vana said. "It's all about the foundation leadership."

Though the district appreciates the work the foundation has done, Vana said, Ramsey is more than capable of conducting fundraisers independently.

Indeed, last month's Read-a-thon went on without the foundation's help.

Vana said he's still interested in gathering all parties to talk. "My goal is to bring everyone together," he said.

But collaboration seems unlikely.

"I'm not interested in giving them a dime until they can tell me where it goes," Rigg said.

Kathryn Nelson is a University of Minnesota student on assignment for the Star Tribune.

© 2008 Star Tribune. All rights reserved.

source:http://www.startribune.com/local/16664661.html

Elliot Spitzer and America's Ethical Perversity

by Rabbi Michael Lerner

The cross-the-political-spectrum attacks on Elliot Spitzer and the intensity of the demands that he resign his office show just how far the Right-wing sexual moralizing has been able to trump any other kind of ethical reasoning in American society.

Going to a prostitute is legal in some states and some countries around the world, and is often the very arrangement that saves families from splitting up whose sexual energies have diminished but whose love is intact. It's not uncommon for men (and now increasingly women as well) who have achieved great power in our society by adopting an outer show of ruthless pursuit of power and influence (even, as in Spitzer's case, if the power is aimed at pursuing laudable ends) to feel a deep emptiness and loneliness that is not addressed by friends or spouse, and hence to seek some kind of outside connection no matter how superficial that is not bound by previous rules and roles. Nevertheless, I and many others in the religious and spiritual world oppose that practice when it involves adultery or prostitution, because it depends on the objectification of another human being, so that sex is disconnected in ways that it should not be from a significant encounter with the spirit of God in the other or a deep recognition that is the only real way to overcome existential or situational alienation.

Moreover, the trade in women for sexual purposes has frequently led to rape and abuse and the kidnapping of young women who are sold into sexual slavery. All of these outrageous practices are abhorrent and should be challenged. The flaunting of sexuality in the media, and the implicit message that the only real satisfaction comes from having the most physically attractive people as sexual partners, not only generates huge dissatisfaction even as it allows corporate advertise to become predators manipulating our personal sense of inadequacy to sell their products, but also generates desires that feed the sexual trade in women. Given this larger social context, until sexual satisfaction is so broadly available in our society that no one has to pay for it and so deeply tied to love that no one is objectified in the process, this kind of exploitation of women and degradation of sex is likely to continue. All of these practices foster the sexual predators of the contemporary world.

So Elliot Spitzer deserves to be critiqued and ought to be doing deep atonement for what he did. His previous moral arrogance and willingness when he had power to do so to prosecute others for their participation in creating prostitution rings makes him an easy target. We, in turn, might practice the forgiveness that our religious and spiritual traditions preach, particularly those of us who have been willing to honeslty face how flawed we ourselves are, and how at times we ourselves fail to embody in our actual practice with others the values that we publicly espouse. Humility and compassion are also part of the path of a spiritual progressive.

But the intensity of the critique of the N.Y. governor, tied with the demand that he resign, shows more about American society's ethical perversity than about Spitzer.

The President of the U.S. and the Vice President, working in concert with several other high ranking officers of our government, lied and distorted to get us involved in a war that has led to the death of over a million Iraqis, the displacement of 3 million more, the death of 4,000 Americans and the wounding of tens of thousands more. After token opposition in Congress, our elected representatives have overwhelmingly passed budgets funding this war, rather than refuse to fund any military projects until the President stopped the war and withdrew the troops.

Meanwhile, our government has overtly engaged in torture, wiretapping of our phones, and violation of our human rights and the rights of people around the world. Senator Diane Feinstein and Senator Charles Schumer votes to confirm as Attonrey General a right-wing judge who refused to repudiate these crimes.

The U.S. government has rejected every attempt to implement the Kyoto environmental agreements or to work out new agreements sufficiently strong to reverse environmental destruction that is certain to lead to new levels of flooding particularly in several poor countries around the world. The consequence: tens of millions of deaths.

The Clinton Administration pushed, along with corporate support, a set of trade agreements that have devastated the farmers of many developing countries, forcing many off their farms and into city slums where their daughters and sons are often sold into sexual slavery. The global economic system we have fostered has led to increasing gaps between the rich and the poor, so that over one out of every three people on the planet lives on less than $2 a day, 1.5 billion live on less than one dollar a day, and over 15,000 children die every day from malnutrition-related diseases and inadequate availability of medicine that is hoarded by the rich countries who can afford the prices made to ensure huge profits to the pharmaceutical industry.

Health insurance companies and private medical profiteers are doing all they can to ensure that there will be no health care for tens of millions of Americans, unless that is provided in ways that guarantee corporate super-profits and thereby guarantee that the cost of health care paid through taxes will be huge and create anger at all government social welfare and well-being programs, leading to their likely de-funding.
People in the US have faced severe economic crises on a regional and soon on a national level because corporations move their centers of production to countries in Asia where they can exploit workers with less government or union interference and where they can destroy the environment with less societal restraints. Wild to achieve greater profits, corporations and the rich have managed to support politicians who lower the taxes on the rich, in the process bankrupting the public sector or severely reducing its ability to provide enough funds for quality education, health care, libraries, public transportation, and social welfare.

That there is no outcry for these government officials and corporate leaders to resign immediately or be impeached, that there is no moral outrage at the entire system that produces this impact, is America's ethical perversity. Instead, the only crime against humanity that the media takes seriously and the politicians fear is being exposed for personal sexual immorality. While everyone basks in their own self-righteous demands on Spitzer, we all allow media and elected officials to fundamentally distort our ethical vision and play out our morality on the smallest of possible stages while ignoring the global and personal consequences of our larger ethical failures.

Rabbi Michael Lerner is editor of Tikkun magazine www.tikkun.org <http://www.tikkun.org> , Chair of the Network of Spiritual Progressives www.spiritualprogressives.org <http://www.spiritualprogressives.org> , rabbi of Beyt Tikkun synagogue-without-walls in San Francisco and Berkeley, and author of The Left Hand of God. He welcomes comments at RabbiLerner@tiikkun.org

If you agree with this perspective, call your local media and ask that it be presented alongside the mainstream views. And help us continue to provide alternative analyses by joining the Network of Spiritual Progressives (www.spiritualprogressives.org) and urging your friends to do so as well!