While the deepest budget cuts will hit the elementary schools in
Morgan Hill Unified, the older students are the ones who will see a
big change next school year.
While the deepest budget cuts will hit the elementary schools in Morgan Hill Unified, the older students are the ones who will see a big change next school year.
Twelve elective periods will be eliminated for 2010-11 after the school board unanimously voted (Trustee Don Moody was absent) to pass a resolution that also approves the layoffs of 28 elementary teachers. Most electives on the chopping block are subjects in applied arts.
At Tuesday’s meeting, members emphasized that the change deals with “services not bodies” at the middle school and high school levels. Meaning staff who teach the electives will be allocated additional periods of “core subjects,” such as math, science or English and the electives will simply dissolve. No jobs will be lost because of the elective changes.
Ann Sobrato High School freshman Mireya Avila said losing electives like the fashion design class she’s taking now isn’t the right move. There are many high school students who simply aren’t going to go to college, and they need skills that will lead to an entry-level job.
“Not everyone is going to be computer engineer … or go to Stanford and become a doctor,” Avila, 15, said. “You have to look at what the majority of people can do.”
The two periods of Beth Pool’s textile and fashion design class will not be part of Sobrato’s curriculum next year. One period each of digital photography, computer application, woodworking and childcare at the high schools will also be eliminated, along with a period each of guitar, foods, photography, computer application and two periods of drama at the junior high schools.
“The purpose … is to develop skills in the kids so that they have a greater chance of being employed,” Pool said. Not to mention, she said, students develop, “greater skills, talents and background for personal hobby opportunities that make life fun and enjoyable.”
Applied art classes utilize problem solving, as well as build on core curriculum basics – such as the use of geometry in fashion, algebra in cooking or trigonometry in woodworking. The electives also allocate more time for students to do hands-on projects that enrich their learning experience beyond reading, writing and arithmetic.
At the board meeting, MHUSD Assistant Superintendent Dr. Jay Totter said that it’s up to the staff at each school site to determine the needs for their students. The “internal change” will be worked on and schools will evaluate which students need an extra period of math, science or English to keep them on the path to graduation and to meet the score requirements on both the state and nationwide tests.
Pool, who has been teaching the fashion courses at Sobrato since it opened in 2004, said students become robotic after being told year after year they have to prepare for the April testing.
“Teachers over the last decade, have had to teach that way: ‘You have to know this by April. Whether you understand it or not or can apply it and use it, you just need to memorize it and pass the test,'” Pool said.
She said that once they reach her in high school, they’ve mastered obeying instructions.
“I hear from employers, they are great at following directions … but they are not problem-solvers,” Pool said.
Sobrato freshman Danee Hendrix, 15, said that enrichment classes like fashion or photography or drama offer relief from the “usual classes.”
“Here, you are learning teamwork skills. You’re learning how to be independent,” Hendrix said.
“And you have to figure out things on your own in different ways than regular subjects,” added Brittany Schmidt, 15.
Superintendent Wes Smith’s support for applied arts reaches a personal level – his father taught shop for 42 years.
“The administrators and staff at Sobrato and at Live Oak have to sit down every year and say, ‘OK, we’d love to offer everything but we can’t, so what can we offer that’s going to meet the needs of all kids,” Smith said.
If the money is not available, cuts must be made somewhere and in many cases seen in California – arts are the first to go. Around the state, school districts have already laid off thousands of teachers, increased class sizes and eliminated programs. According to the state Legislative Analyst’s Office, per-pupil spending for kindergarten through 12th grade fell 4 percent in 2009 and will be cut another 8 percent under Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s proposed budget for 2010-2011.
For MHUSD, the possible layoffs of 28 elementary teachers translates into increasing the number of students in each class in kindergarten through third grade. As it stands now, most classrooms in those grades have 20 students to one teacher but in order to prepare for the “worst-case scenario” the teacher to student ratio will grow to 24 to one; the figure that Totter said is the “biggest bang for our buck at this time.”
Pink slips will be handed out to teachers March 10 to 12, but if possible the board will renege the layoff notices.
Stories like Bianca Dominguez’s put a face to the list of cuts and changes facing the school district.
Dominguez, 17, said that if it weren’t for Sobrato’s fashion design class, she would have never known she could go to fashion school nearby. In between studying the color wheel and sketching designs for her next project, Dominguez met a representative from the Art Institute of California in Sunnyvale who Pool arranged to come talk to the class. That experience put the fire in Dominguez’s eyes, and she has since applied and attended the open house for the fashion school.
“I’m determined to go now. If I didn’t have her class I would have just gone on to get a degree in something I didn’t love,” she said. The senior said she expects to hear today whether or not she will be accepted.
Dominguez brought back a T-shirt for Ms. Pool from the Art Institute’s open house. It hangs on the white board at the front of class. Once all of the yards of fabric and sewing machines get packed up this summer at Sobrato, the slogan on the T-shirt sums up the elective changes in two words: “got art?” it reads.
