Hall Middle School: One Walk, 85% of the Budget

Hall Middle School's PTA in Larkspur, California gets about 85% of its budget from a single fall walkathon. Its website also explains, more clearly than most, why families there are asked to give twice.

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The Hall PTA calls the walkathon "the PTA's primary fundraiser" and says "it accounts for approximately 85% of the PTA budget."1 For the 2024–25 school year it set a target of $55,000 and reported "a final total of over $61,000 raised," roughly $6,000 over goal. The walk is held each fall; the 2025 edition was set for Friday, September 26.

Hall is a middle school, and most of the other school walks in our case studies are elementary. For how asking and incentives change at that age, see our middle school walk-a-thon guide.

SPARK pays for teachers; the walk pays for everything else

Larkspur families are asked to support two organizations, and Hall's PTA has a page explaining the difference. SPARK, a separate group, "directly funds school staff positions (Art, Science, Music, and Technology)" across the Larkspur-Corte Madera School District. The Hall PTA, by contrast, is "uniquely and solely focused on Hall Middle School."2

So the walkathon doesn't fund salaries. It funds the daily texture of one campus. The PTA's list: student school supplies, professional development for teachers, instructional materials, classroom supplies and equipment, PE and playground equipment, campus events, parent education and campus improvements.1 Those are the line items a weak walk year would squeeze.

A plain "who pays for what" page like Hall's answers the question every PTA in a district with a foundation eventually hears from a parent: didn't we already give? It's worth writing one before the kickoff letter goes out, and linking it from the parent FAQ.

The upside and the risk of one big day

Funding a year from one event is efficient: one campaign, one volunteer push, one message to families, instead of a calendar of smaller sales. The cost is concentration. A washed-out walk day, a missed kickoff or a thin volunteer list hits 85% of the budget at once. A PTA in that position needs a rain date written down months ahead (the safety checklist has a rain plan section) and a goal worked out from what the budget needs rather than from last year's total, which is what the budget calculator is for.

Budgeting for a short year

A PTA this dependent on one walk can protect itself by deciding in spring what gets cut if the walk falls short, rather than in October. One way to do it with Hall's own list: rank the line items in two tiers. The first tier is what the school can't go without, such as classroom supplies, instructional materials and student school supplies. Fund that tier up to the level you're confident the walk will reach, say 80% of the goal. The second tier, which might hold campus improvements, events and new equipment, is released only once the money is in.

On Hall's 2024–25 numbers, the first tier would have been about $44,000 of a $55,000 goal. The walk cleared that by about $17,000, leaving room to fund the second tier with some to spare. In a weak year, the cuts would already be agreed, and the board's job would be to announce them, not argue about them. A cash reserve carried from year to year, even a modest one, does the same job from the other side.

Hall's pages don't publish the walk's costs, donor counts or format, and its 2025–26 budget wasn't posted when we checked, so we can't say what the walk nets or how the PTA reaches its total. For a PTA that publishes its books line by line, read Franklin Elementary in Burlingame, across the bay.

Sources

  1. Hall PTA, Fundraising (accessed October 19, 2026).
  2. Hall PTA, SPARK vs. Hall PTA (accessed October 19, 2026).