It was no surprise to music teacher Lauren Schwartz when SFUSD Superintendent Maria Su, announcing the district’s new enrollment system last month, acknowledged that the city’s schools are inequitably resourced.
Schwartz and her coworkers at Visitacion Valley Middle School knew their school badly needed more resources, and they’d been brainstorming solutions for the last nine months.
Viz Valley Middle School, in southeast San Francisco, serves about 300 students. It has been the recipient of grant-funded programs and has hosted volunteers from the Golden State Warriors franchise who did a day of community service in September.
Other organizations like Real Options for City Kids provide after-school programming for supplemental learning and sports. But even with extra support, there are many more gaps that need to be filled.
“We’ve kind of just watched the budget get slashed more and more every year,” said Schwartz. “We’re doing so much work.”
Now, a group of teachers and staff at the middle school is creating a nonprofit, Friends of Viz Valley, which they hope will raise funds in the absence of a Parent-Teacher Association.
Since 1978, when Proposition 13 drastically cut the commercial and residential property taxes that fund California’s schools, PTAs have become fundraising powerhouses for schools trying to plug the holes in their budgets left by cuts.
SFUSD’s public relations manager, Katrina Kincaide, said that SPARK, SFUSD’s public foundation, is launching a campaign for schools that don’t have a PTA or fundraising structure.
PTAs are nonprofits that function as chapter organizations; they must agree to state and national bylaws, in addition to following nonprofit rules. But Viz Valley Middle School, like many other schools in San Francisco, doesn’t have one.
Karen Cheng Meiselman, executive director of Second District PTA, a branch of California State Parent-Teacher Associations serving PTAs in San Francisco, said it’s often hard to maintain the groups, especially when parents are already strapped for time and money.
At minimum, PTAs need a president, a secretary, a treasurer, and 15 members. The time commitment for these volunteers varies: A president is likely to spend up to 20 hours a month, while general members can commit one to three hours.
“The biggest challenge is getting parents involved and keeping them engaged,” Meiselman said. “There’s always one parent who reaches out with a lot of enthusiasm, but when it comes to getting other parents on board, that’s where things tend to fall apart.”
A nonprofit, however, can function with just one board member. Starting and running a 501(c)(3) is complicated, but it also allows a group like Friends of Viz Valley to operate more independently, without the added layer of PTA rules.
At Viz Valley Middle School, 82.8% of students are economically disadvantaged, according to the California School Dashboard. Principal Maya Baker said not many of the parents are “helicopter parents” with the time to hover over every aspect of their children’s education.
Schwartz agreed that parent engagement at Viz Valley can be difficult. The music teacher sits on the School Site Council, a group of parents, staff, and students focused on the school’s success, and she says it’s often hard to get parents who work long hours to come to their monthly meetings.
“They just have a lot of stuff that they’re doing,” Schwartz said. “And even a once-a-month commitment is really hard.”
The same would be true for starting a PTA, she said — especially at a middle school, which only has three grades and fewer parents.
According to a list provided to Mission Local by Second District PTA, 59 schools in SFUSD have a PTA, and about 40 schools don’t.
Some San Francisco PTAs, with wealthier families involved, fundraise hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. Claire Lilienthal Elementary School, a K-8 school, received a whopping $845,000 from its PTA in 2025 and, in prior school years, its PTA has raised more than $1 million.
With that money, some schools have even added teachers, though the district banned the practice of adding privately paid teachers to reduce class sizes last year during a hiring freeze. PTA funds can still pay for other positions like assistant principals or instructional aides.
The goal of Friends of Viz Valley is to raise money as PTAs do, “so that our students can have really positive, wonderful experiences at school,” Schwartz said.
While the group awaits official nonprofit status from the IRS, expected in early 2027, it has developed the nonprofit’s mission statement. Each board member — all of them teachers or staff at the school — has reached out to 10 friends to ask for donations.
Schwartz raised $3,000 herself by putting Friends of Viz Valley’s website on Facebook. About $800 of that money immediately went to a Latin Heritage Month cultural event.
“Usually, we have an arts-and-crafts section and sports outside,” Crystal Alvarado, a board member, said. “And this time we have actual activities and actual food.”
At the group’s most recent meeting, members identified two main goals for their first year. The first is giving $800 to celebrate all the heritage months, like Black History Month and AAPI Heritage Month.
The second is funding a large-scale field trip — maybe Disneyland?
“We haven’t had the capacity,” Schwartz said. “How amazing would that be if we could have that kind of experience with our students? That’d be fantastic.”
Disneyland is probably not attainable, Schwartz admitted, “But we can dream big.” At least, she says, they could take students on local trips without having to spend two hours each way on public transit.
Nonprofits connected to a public school are rare in San Francisco, but there is some precedent. In 2014, Zac Fisher and Stephen Lambright, friends of Mission High’s then-principal, founded the Mission High Foundation.
And, though Mission High had an active PTA until 2024, it largely focused on fundraisers like bake sales. The foundation has been able to fund college- and career-prep programs, teacher grants and school-wide events.
Fisher said the Mission High Foundation worked with the school’s PTA and would sometimes give it money. But the PTA was largely an unsuccessful body, Fisher said: Mission High students, like Viz Valley students, often come from lower-income families with parents who work multiple jobs and late shifts, and have less time to participate.
Fisher recently connected with Schwartz, and she said she hopes to build a relationship with the Mission High Foundation to strengthen the work of Friends of Viz Valley.
The nonprofit, Schwartz said, doesn’t plan to do fundraising for one-time school supply buys or helping one club with a project. The group wants to bring the whole community together for school-wide events that enrich the experiences of all students.
“There are so many times that the district ignores the schools on this side of town,” Schwartz said. “It’s uplifting, just letting every kid feel special.”
