Program Cuts at I.S. 89 in Wake of PTA Funding Crisis by Etta Sanders Faced with a dwindling of funds that is threatening school programs, the PTA of I.S. 89 is sending out an S.O.S. to parents for donations and fundraising volunteers. At the first PTA meeting of the school year held Sept. 21 and attended by about 45 parents, PTA officials laid out the bleak financial picture. It didn’t require a math teacher to figure out that with a budget of $93,500 and a bank balance of $48,000, they will soon run out of money. “This year by December we’ll be pretty much through that,” Laura Waitz, PTA treasurer, said of the cash on hand. The school will almost certainly have to drop its 6th-grade Spanish teacher, which would save $22,000. Last year the PTA paid for a part-time 6th-grade Spanish teacher for the second half of the school year. The Department of Education budget covers only 7th- and 8th- grade language teachers. Even more serious, said principal Ellen Foote, without $30,000 of budgeted PTA support, the school will not be able to hire two, instead of their usual three music teachers. The PTA also helps pay for school trips, special assemblies and the 8th-grade yearbook. The PTA had also hoped to make a $5,000 contribution this year to the free after-school program, run by Manhattan Youth, which is also facing financial trouble. Most of the PTA’s cash on hand is left over from grants received after Sept. 11, 2001. No funds were raised last school year and a spring fundraiser held jointly with P.S. 89 even lost money. To make matters worse, last year’s fundraising chairman quit just days before the beginning of this school year. PTA leaders said that low parent participation is a big part of the problem. Last year fewer than half of the parents made donations of any amount to the PTA. Because students come from all over the sprawling district and are in the school for only three years, the PTA leaders say, parents don’t feel the level of commitment that they do at an elementary school or a neighborhood middle school. “If this were a community school it would be a lot stronger,” said Maria Ouranitsas, last year’s PTA co-president. “It would be as strong as the elementary school. Parents are there at P.S. 89. They are there and ready to participate. We don’t get that with the intermediate school.”