The differences were stark last spring.

As the Ferris High School orchestra flew to Italy, the Rogers orchestra rode out to a music festival in Cheney.

That’s largely because affluent Ferris parents have generated the energy and the generosity to make expensive extracurricular activities possible. They raised more than $50,000 for the Italy trip alone. At Rogers, where more than 60 percent of the students qualify for free or reduced-price lunches, many parents lack the paychecks and networks required to raise similar amounts.

It’s not an inequity that anyone deliberately created, nor one that Rogers High School band director Ron Crenshaw begrudges. He’s taught music in both schools, and he’s pretty convinced his students benefit more by playing for local audiences. He works hard to find gigs for his steel drum band, for example, at NorthTown Mall or the spring celebration at North Wall School.

He points out that area residents have become increasingly disconnected from local musicians. They can buy CDs or download music from the Internet so easily now. Sure he’d love to book a trip to Jamaica for his steel drum band, but he’s willing to bet Spokane audiences need to hear his students more.

Parents at his school do rally to help support more modest trips, he points out, such as a spring visit to Seattle two years ago, when students toured the Experience Music Project and performed at an area mall.

So how can Inland Northwest schools mitigate these inequities?

Several ways. The most exciting idea is a relatively new one for public schools. The Spokane school district is in the process of creating a nonprofit foundation. The Mead school district already has one.

That idea has the potential to tap the community’s amazing impulse to give, then turn around to distribute the funds in ways that can benefit all students – not just those from affluent neighborhoods.

Fortunately, the federal government kicks in funds for extra academic help in schools with higher rates of poverty. It’s the extracurriculars that wind up shortchanged at those schools.

School officials quickly offer another answer: If Washington legislators fully paid the costs of basic education, which the state constitution requires, school districts would be able to use special levy funds to pay for drill team performances and band festivals. Districts still aren’t likely to spring for trips to Italy. In the Spokane schools, for example, the money would more likely pay for restoring after-school sports in elementary gyms.

Generous parents are to be thanked and applauded. There’s no better way to spend parents’ energy than to support the learning and growth of their children. And once their own children graduate, many empty-nester parents would be eager to move their fundraising talents away from a particular school’s senior all-nighter or band trip and into districtwide philanthropy to benefit the children who belong to us all.

That’s where new school district foundations can step right in.