EDUCATION: Manhattan Beach Ed Foundation Wine Auction hopes to restore programs for this fall
by Mark McDermott
The Manhattan Beach Education Foundation has a uniquely crucial goal for its 27th Annual Manhattan Wine Auction on June 12.
The hope, as always, is to meet fundraising goals, but what is attached to those goals this year is whether or not students will return to classrooms that are as rich with opportunities as the ones they left when the pandemic hit.
After a year of budget cuts within Manhattan Beach Unified School District, MBEF has fallen $1.5 million short of its annual $5 million goal. If the Wine Auction is not able to make up some of that ground, students will lose access to physical education teachers, library resource specialists, science specialists, music specialists, and school counselors. They will also face larger class sizes.
MBEF executive director Hilary Mahan said the dip in fundraising was not due to parents and students who left the district during the pandemic, but rather usual donors who simply have not yet contributed.
“It’s not that they moved to Montana,” Mahon said. “It’s that they were here but didn’t see the connection between donating to MBEF and what was happening in the schools at the time. And I get that, I really do. But unfortunately, we raised funding for the next year. So all of that $3.5 million is just not enough to make what we typically make happen in our schools.”
One of MBEF’s successful long-term projects, the MBEF Endowment, will help offset losses. The Endowment raised $20 million by 2020 in order to sustain yearly $1 million disbursements to schools regardless of ups and downs to the economy. But even with this new source of funding, MBEF faces a shortfall in its usual grants to schools.
“Even with the disbursement from the endowment, as large as that is now, a million dollars, we’re still shy of what we would need,” Mahon said.
The combination of last year’s budget cuts, distance learning, and costs that parents incurred providing child care and often outside educational resources for their kids in the last year have negatively impacted MBEF fundraising. Parents apparently saw a diminished value in what MBUSD was providing during the pandemic, or else were simply unable to afford past contribution levels.
The solution MBEF has come up with is to utilize its entire “Paddle Raise” proceeds for next year’s programs. The hope is to raise $1 million, and thereby restore everything that would otherwise be lost. Mahon likened it to the goal a Mira Costa High School soccer player scored to propel the Mustangs to a CIF title last week.
“We need that goal,” Mahon said. “And then we can hold on to it. I mean, when you think about the years that our community has supported us, and supported our schools — we can’t stop now. We can’t lose that momentum. And COVID has tried to force that, but we’re going to have to wake up and move beyond it in order to really continue the impact we have had.”
MBUSD board president Jen Fenton said that MBEF’s success will translate into the district’s success.
“We are truly grateful for MBEF’s partnership and proceeds from this year’s Wine Auction would immediately help restore student programs back to the 2019 level,” Fenton said. “Given budget shortfalls in education funding, it’s increasingly important for our community to continue showing their dedication and support of our public schools.”
The Wine Auction will once again be online this year, but with a twist. MBEF has created in-home “Culinary and Wine Experiences,” bringing local restaurants to donors’ homes to serve meals for six to 12 people, paired with wines from “Reserve Room” winery partners. This won’t recreate the gala celebration for which the Wine Auction, one of the community’s signature events, is known for. But it will create a new and hopefully rich experience, making the best out of a challenging time.
“These culinary and wine experiences are pretty phenomenal,” Mahon said. “With local, high-end restaurants — you know, the Arthur J, Slay Steak and Fish, Petros, and all the fabulous small businesses here in town that have partnered with us. Then these Reserved Room wineries came together as well, and will be in people’s homes, and they’re creating their own little wine options in their homes and then logging in or tuning into our live stream show at 7 p.m.”
The goal, beyond raising money, is simply to bring the community back together.
“My best hope is that people will participate, that people will be part of this celebration, because we all know the Wine Auction is an iconic celebration of our schools and quite frankly, we have a lot to celebrate,” Mahon said. “I mean, our schools and our students and our teachers fared a lot better than some other surrounding communities. We should be celebrating how we accomplished what we did, and now we should be putting forth an effort to go beyond that and get back to the abundance of opportunities and strength in our schools that we’ve always supported. So my hope is that there will be a message of togetherness, of community positivity around what we are providing our students.”
See MBEF.org for more information. ER