May 3, 2008

Library, music to take brunt of cutbacks

School district board agrees to cut $6M over next 2 years

By Will Oremus / Daily News Staff Writer

The push is on to save elementary school library and music programs after the San Mateo-Foster City School District's board agreed on $6 million in budget cuts over the next two years.

Those programs will take the brunt of the reductions as the 10,000-student district plans ahead for an anticipated statewide dropoff in public education funding. Also hit will be the district's lowest-performing schools, which will lose additional teacher's aide positions that were intended to boost test scores.

The district's education foundation is accustomed to donating money for libraries and music programs, but it's usually just to enhance them. This time, there won't be any such programs to enhance unless the foundation raises hundreds of thousands to prevent layoffs.

"Our goal is to raise $400,000 by the end of the school year so we can give it to the schools in time to help out for next year," said Jean Abeles, executive director of the education foundation and the mother of a middle schooler.

That would restore at least some of the positions that were eliminated by the school board at its Thursday night meeting. The full list of cuts included eight K-5 library assistants, two middle school librarians, two classroom music teachers and two instrumental music teachers. The total savings is pegged at $1.4 million over two years.

The staff reductions at the struggling schools, called "program improvement" schools, will save another $900,000. The district will also temporarily reduce payments into its benefits fund, saving an extra $822,000.

There were also some proposed cuts the district decided not to pursue. Those included reducing the seven-period day to six periods, cutting a special program for new students who speak no English, and assigning just one principal to cover two small elementary schools.

Consolidating the principal positions at Meadow Heights and Beresford elementary schools "has been on our list before, but it's always something we ended up taking off," said Superintendent Pendery Clark. "Even though the two schools are quite small, it would be a disadvantage for any school not to have a full-time principal."

Abeles said the education foundation is now going into "urgent mode" to save what it can of the library and music programs.

"We're reaching out to the community, parents, businesses, applying for grants," she said. A $5,000 grant from HSBC bank earlier this week brought the total raised so far to about $140,000.

"Literacy is critical to an education," Abeles said. "It's particularly important for children who come from disadvantaged backgrounds to have access to books and research skills. If they don't get it at school, it's likely they're not going to get it."

As for music, she added, "If kids don't get exposed to it at a young age, they tend not to learn it. ... There's a lot of research that shows that music helps kids academically, particularly their achievement in math and science."



E-mail Will Oremus at woremus@dailynewsgroup.com.





ON THE WEB

To learn more about the San Mateo-Foster City Education foundation, or to donate online, visit the following Web site:

http://www.forkidsedfund.org/