SAUGUS SCHOOLS TO GET HELP RAISING FUNDS.

Byline: Mary Schubert Daily News Staff Writer

In what seems to be a sign of the times, when public education increasingly is getting a helping hand from the private sector, the Saugus Union School District is working out a plan to form a fund-raising arm.

Last month the Saugus school board voted to create a nonprofit education foundation that would pay for things the district can't afford to give its roughly 7,000 students.

Superintendent Joseph Fazio said that, in the 1994-95 school year, state government reimbursements to California public schools - known as ``average daily attendance'' money - averaged $4,724 per student per year. Allotments vary by school district, but during that year the Saugus share was $3,698 per child per year, Fazio said.

``Our revenue per pupil is about $1,000 below the state average,'' Fazio said.

But while Saugus and other school districts will continue to lobby the state Legislature for bigger allotments, public school officials have been realizing they need to take the initiative to generate their own cash, he said.

Fazio said that existing support groups, like PTAs, consistently have raised money to pay for field trips, fine arts and after-school programs, library books and computers for the district's 11 elementary schools.

Parents also provide free labor by volunteering in the classroom, and businesses have formed partnerships and ``adoptions'' with every school in the district, he said.

Still, Fazio said, more financial help would be even better. ``I think we're providing an excellent education for our kids, but it's not just because of the state's contribution,'' Fazio said.

``Our principals have become fund-raisers. We spend more and more time and energy raising funds in order to make this a level playing field for students,'' Fazio said.

On Dec. 17, the five-member school board approved a request to form an education foundation. Fazio said he would like the organization to be up and running by late spring; he said he hopes the group would be able to raise $100,000 per year.

Currently, the district and the school board are seeking an attorney who will help them - pro bono, of course - in applying for nonprofit status and setting up the bylaws that will govern the educational foundation, Fazio said. A board of directors also would have to be chosen.

Three other foundations raise money for schools in the Santa Clarita Valley.

The biggest is the College of the Canyons Foundation, which during the 1995-96 fiscal year raised $420,000 for campus programs, said Kathleen Maloney, executive director of the fund-raising group.

``All the money we raise,'' Maloney said, ``is to support the programs and the goals of the Santa Clarita Valley Community College District,'' which oversees College of the Canyons.

The foundation's biggest annual fund-raisers include Silver Spur, a gala dinner scheduled for this March to honor community volunteers, and the golf tournament held every November and sponsored by Santa Clarita Valley native Todd Zeile, the new Dodgers third baseman.

The foundation, begun in the early 1980s, raised a significant amount of money for the new state-of-the-art campus library, Maloney noted. Other donations to the group have supported a scholarship program for ``at-risk'' youth from the local Boys & Girls Club, young people who otherwise couldn't afford college.

Maloney said public school systems in California increasingly are becoming ``state assisted,'' rather than state funded - and local communities must find a way to bridge funding shortfalls.

``It used to be all our needs were met and we gave a really good education to our students,'' she said. Now College of the Canyons must aggressively raise money to close the gap between the funding it receives from the state and ``what it costs us to run the college,'' Maloney said.

The Castaic Union School District, with an enrollment of 1,935 students in grades kindergarten through eight, formed a nonprofit fund-raising entity about four years ago, said Laura Kumazawa, a member of the board of directors.

The Castaic Education Foundation has bought supplies and equipment like textbooks, computers, backpacks and field trips, Kumazawa said.