Private donations to a public school district shouldn’t be viewed as a problem, but they raise some interesting issues that local officials are working to resolve.

The goal of a public school district is to provide a roughly equivalent educational experience for all of its students. Schools with a higher percentage of students from lower-income families should have about the same number of computers or amount of play equipment available in schools located in more affluent areas. If all private donations are made to and distributed by the school district as a whole, it’s relatively easy to direct that money to where it is needed most.

But what if a donor has a particular project in mind? The Lawrence school district and its endowment association wouldn’t want to turn that donation away just because it might provide something at one school that isn’t available at another. But, as an equity issue, can the district afford to provide the same equipment or opportunity at other schools?

Some parent-teacher groups in Lawrence have raised money to donate large numbers of computers to their schools. The board then has used district money to help beef up technology at schools unable to match that fund-raising effort. In a sense, the PTAs that raised money actually were raising money for the entire district because the money that might have been spent on computers for their schools then could be deferred to fill a need at other schools. Hopefully, they don’t feel cheated because they went to the effort to provide something extra for their own children.

Ideally, state and federal funds would be adequate to fill all of a district’s needs, but that’s not likely to happen. With that in mind, school districts should welcome donations that allow them to provide a better educational opportunity to students. Certainly, two recent $10,000 donations from Lawrence High School graduates is cause for celebration. These gifts to the Lawrence Schools Foundation are ideal because they can be directed to districtwide goals, but the district and the foundation are right to consider how they will handle gifts from private donors who want to direct their funds to a specific purpose.

Private donors willing to put their money into providing a better education for Kansas students deserve our gratitude, but there are, unfortunately, legitimate concerns about making sure private contributors aren’t, in any way, attempting to buy influence or favor with school officials.

It’s disappointing to see public K-12 schools feeling the need to actively pursue some of the same fund-raising tactics used by state universities in Kansas. Public schools shouldn’t have to look to private money to pick up the financial ball that increasingly is being dropped by state funding decisions.