Leader of Santa Barbara Education Foundation Ready for a Change
http://www.noozhawk.com/noozhawk/article/102708_leader_of_santa_barbara_education_foundation_ready_for_a_change/
By Rob Kuznia, Noozhawk Staff Writer
After working tirelessly for nine years, executive director Tina Fanucchi plans to step down in February.
When a public school district has little or no money for music, and a private foundation comes along to ensure the initiation of a program in which every fourth-grader in the district receives violin lessons, you can be certain that somewhere, someone is working like mad behind the scenes.
In Santa Barbara, that person has been Tina Fanucchi.
For nine years, Fanucchi has been the executive director of the Santa Barbara Education Foundation, not to mention its only full-time employee. However, Fanucchi, 46, has announced that this calendar year will be her last.
“I feel like I’m needing some time to rejuvenate,” she said Monday, sitting in the backyard of the San Roque neighborhood house that she remodeled herself.
It’s not difficult to understand why. Last year alone, Fanucchi, with the help of a part-time grant writer under her supervision, secured $275,000 for the elementary school music program. The money purchased hundreds of violins and other instruments, and contributed heavily to the salaries of the two music teachers.
Foundation board member Mark Ingalls described Fanucchi’s drive and energy as extraordinary.
“She’s obviously got a passion for both education and music,” he said.
Working tirelessly has long been a way of life for Fanucchi. She has started three companies: The Lone Palm, a café and juice bar in her native Carpinteria; Equity Mates, an organization that enables nonrelatives to get together to purchase property; and Befana, a construction company. The latter two were bought out and are still in operation.
The entrepreneurial spirit runs in her family. Her late mother, Rosemarie Fanucchi, co-founded the Coastal View News in Carpinteria, serving as its editor-in-chief until 2003. She died of cancer at 69 in 2006. Her father, Nilo, ran a construction company.
Fanucchi is staying with the Santa Barbara Education Foundation until February, at which point she plans to take a few months off before diving into another job.
She said her biggest hope for the future of the schools and the foundation is that voters approve two parcel tax initiatives on the Nov. 4 ballot, Measures H and I.
The parcel taxes — of which passage requires two-thirds majority approval — would put money back into some of the local school programs, such as music, theater and foreign language, that have declined in recent years.
“Now more than ever, especially in these economic times, we need support like this,” she said.
The foundation is spearheading the campaign in favor of the ballot measures.
Measure H pertains to residents living within the seventh-through-12th grade district, or secondary district, which stretches from Goleta to Montecito. At $23 annually per parcel, it would bring more music and foreign language to the schools, as well as restore the small class sizes in ninth-grade math that were recently eliminated in a round of budget cuts by the school board. Measure I pertains only to those living in the elementary district, which exists within the boundaries of the city of Santa Barbara. At $27 annually per parcel, it would allow the district to expand its music program to include grades kindergarten through third grade.
If passed, the taxes would be collected for four years.
“It’s kind of daring to speak of a measure during such turbulent economic times,” she said, “but even with that said, $50 a year for four years — I mean, that’s two large pizzas — it yields $1.6 million.”
Passage of the initiatives would allow the 27-year-old foundation to get back to focusing on school programs other than music, as it had been doing before recent years.
In the mid-1990s, for instance, it paid for six school playgrounds. In 2001, it purchased pull-down maps, books and encyclopedias for every classroom in fourth through sixth grade. Ingalls said that the Santa Barbara Education Foundation plans to start expanding its focus, to serve as more of a vocal advocate of the public school district.
“Several board members would like to see the education foundation work with the district to help highlight its successes, and not just focus on budget crises,” he said. “The only time we see the district in the paper is when it’s defending itself. We think we can help be a voice for public education.”
He said the organization soon will establish a committee charged with initiating a search for Fanucchi’s successor.
John Robinson, the president of the Santa Barbara Education Foundation, praised Fanucchi’s performance.
“Tina has done a tremendous job leading the Santa Barbara Education Foundation,” he said in an e-mail to Noozhawk. “She leaves the organization with a strong board, a great track record of providing meaningful financial support for the Santa Barbara schools, and the confidence to carry on the good work into the future. We are grateful that Tina is providing us with six months notice, so that we will be able to conduct a thorough search for a dedicated and knowledgeable successor.”
Fanucchi, who holds an undergraduate degree in sociology from UCSB and a master’s degree in public administration from California State University Northridge, said she is interested in working in the other dimension of the foundation world: the portion that vets proposals and gives out money, as opposed to the one that writes grants and asks for money.
“Most fundraising professionals, we have a set life span,” she said. “And I’m feeling like I’d like to give up that part of my career.”
Noozhawk staff writer Rob Kuznia can be reached at rkuznia@noozhawk.com.
http://www.noozhawk.com/noozhawk/article/102708_leader_of_santa_barbara_education_foundation_ready_for_a_change/