IT'S been every school for itself in the San Jose Unified 0,07School District since the defeat earlier this month of a proposed parcel tax.

Parents in Almaden Valley are raising hundreds of thousands of dollars to save the jobs of teachers and librarians.

Parents in the poorer downtown neighborhoods don't have that ability; they're bracing for big cuts and larger classes.

The role of parental fund-raising in a district that values fairness has become a divisive issue. The rush of fund-raising caught district trustees flat-footed. Staff and trustees must respond quickly and creatively, with a short-term fix and a long-term answer, because the funding crisis appears only to be getting worse.

The goal should be preserving equity while encouraging more dollars from private sources. In an immediate response to the budget crisis, the trustees should consider shifting dollars from the desegregation budget to save positions like librarians in poor schools, while allowing wealthy schools to fund-raise however they can.

In the long run, though, the district must deal with fund-raising head-on. It should require PTAs and other groups to share a portion of the money they raise -- perhaps 50 percent -- with all district schools.

What makes this issue tough is competing values:

It would be crazy to rule that parents can't donate to their children's school -- or that PTAs can spend whatever they want on band uniforms, but nothing on priorities like improving literacy and raising reading scores.

But parents' wealth or fundraising skills should not determine which schools have 20 kids in a class and which have 35. That undermines the basic principle that a solid public education should be available to all, equally.

Last week, parents at Hacienda Elementary brought this simmering issue into the open by pledging to rehire the school's long-time librarian, while classifying her as a resource teacher.

That contradicts board policy, and Superintendent Linda Murray and the trustees are likely to say no. The district permits parent groups to pay the salaries for ``enrichment'' programs, like arts and technology. But it prohibits using private funding to pay for basic districtwide needs, like librarians. The rationale is that it can't hold principals and teachers equally accountable unless every school has the same basic resources.

That's not a creative solution: it's resorting to the lowest common denominator.

Palo Alto may be a model for change. As a result of a school board decision last year, parent groups will continue to raise money for supplies and extracurricular activities at their own schools. But money for any staff positions will be raised districtwide, through the All-Schools Fund, and distributed on a per-student basis to every school.

Such an approach will strike a balance between local control and district equity. Parents will still have an incentive to give to their kids' school; kids from poor schools will also benefit.

San Jose Unified will soon come out from under court supervision after a two-decade-old desegregation suit. It risks becoming segregated again, by haves and have-nots, unless school fundraising is spread fairly among neighborhood schools.