Private donations intended to fund staff positions in Shawnee Mission schools would be strictly limited and subjected to rigorous scoring to make sure they don’t cause an imbalance in resources among schools, according to a new policy being considered by the school board.
At its meeting last Monday, the board discussed but took no action on a policy draft that attempts to address inequities between school feeder patterns and the perception that the wealthier Shawnee Mission East area benefits more educationally from its ability to fundraise.
If approved, the new rules wouldn’t go into effect until the 2026-2027 school year.
Board committees and administrators have been studying the use of donations to pay for staff positions — what the district calls “community-funded positions” — for about a year.
More broadly, statistics provided by district administrators to a special committee of three school board members showed that over the previous three school years, about 80% of private donations dedicated to a particular school went to schools with less than 20% of students on free or reduced lunch (a common proxy to gauge schools’ level of wealth).
Schools in the Shawnee Mission East feeder pattern led donation totals by a wide margin, receiving $2.15 million overall over that period, more than the other four high school feeder patterns combined.
What the draft policy says
The draft policy reviewed last week focuses on a particular subset of donations within that larger fundraising: donations made to fund extra staff positions.
According to the draft policy, the district generally would not accept donations for full- or part-time positions or regular or special education classroom teachers.
Examples of community-funded positions that have been paid for through donations in the past include classroom aides and interventionists. Library aides and counselors were also mentioned during Monday’s board discussion.
Another key point of the draft policy is that private donations could not fund staffing for one school that other schools of the same level (meaning an elementary school compared to other elementary schools) don’t have.
But it does leave room for prospective donors to plead their case through an application and a scoring system. The administration would review the application and make a recommendation to the school board for a final decision.
If a position is then created using privately raised dollars, the employee would be hired and overseen by the district, and the donor or donors would have no input or authority over their work.
The new policy sets up a multi-step scoring system with two review committees that take into consideration staffing ratios and needs in the building where the position would be, as well as alignment with district goals, academic needs, impact on equity among schools, sustainability and community input.
“We’ve created a process to avoid saying ‘No'”
During last Monday’s discussion, board members came to a consensus, saying they welcomed the new guardrails and an explicit policy where none existed before.
At-large board member David Westbrook, who has often said during committee meetings he wants to find a balanced solution that doesn’t discourage donations, said the policy creates a process that requires “disciplined thinking” about how a donation would affect the whole district.
“Democracy is protected by bureaucracy,” he said.
Board members Jessica Hembree and Jamie Borgman, who both were on the early committees studying the donations issue, said they were glad to see more guidance than the district had previously, although it might be worth taking another look as the policy is implemented.
Hembree said she preferred the “process-heavy” proposal to the current lack of strong guidance but still voiced qualms about the fact that not all communities are going to be able to fundraise equally.
“A little bit of me feels like we’ve created a process to avoid saying ‘No,’” she said.
Borgman asked if the district could use the policy to encourage a donor or school community that gets approval for a privately donated staff position to also donate to the Shawnee Mission Education Foundation, funds for which are distributed districtwide.
“Because every feeder pattern cannot fundraise with the same enthusiasm, I think it would be a nice gesture to encourage but not require a donation to (the foundation) when an application has been approved,” she said. “There are a lot of parents who would gladly help another school if they just knew there was a need.”
Use of community-funded positions has declined in recent years
Board President Mary Sinclair and at-large member Heather Ousley urged members not to forget that even schools in well-off areas may have kids in need.
“There’s going to be kids potentially at East who have a high level of need but also have the additional feeling of being alone with that need in their building,” Ousley said.
Sinclair added that the district’s use of community-funded positions spiked in 2009, during the Great Recession. At that time, $30 million had been cut from the district’s budget in the middle of the school year, she said.
During the 2024-25 school year, there were just 11.6 full-time employees listed as community-funded positions in the entire district, out of a total staff of roughly 3,800 employees.
Since a subsequent state supreme court ruling started to restore school funding, the use of community-funded staff positions has declined, she said.
Still, Sinclair reminded board members that the district is likely to be short millions of dollars for special education expenditures next year from the state, and federal funds could also be in question.
The donations policy will go before the board again on April 28 for edits and possibly a final vote.
