Voices from the Front
More funds would give better chance to learn in Grand Rapids
Dorothy
Jo Butler lays it on the line
when she talks about the education
funding problem in the Grand Rapids
school district.
“We don’t have the funding we need to give our students the best opportunity to learn,” said Butler, who teaches at Park High School.
“Our district offers wonderful academic programs, but we need more funding to implement higher-level programs for our advanced students and to provide resource books and more enrichment materials for our other students and at-risk kids.
“There’s no money for field trips. We’re doing the best we can with the resources available, but our students deserve more.”
Ann Arbor EA President Linda Carter ticks off budget cuts that are devastating her district’s academic programs and hurting students in the classroom.
“Gone are our curriculum coordinators. We lost 42 teachers to retirement and not all were replaced. The district cut 20 percent of our tech staff and 19 building secretaries. We’ve cut a portion of athletics and a portion of fine arts. Class sizes have grown significantly at the secondary level.”
With the defeat of Proposal 5, the education funding guarantee, Carter worries about the future for Ann Arbor Public School students.
“My district is planning to cut $6 million from instruction next year and $5 million more the year after next,” Carter said. “This madness must stop. We need a stronger investment in education.”
Livonia's plan to handle budget problems divides community
Michigan’s
education funding crisis tore a community apart when the Livonia Board of Education
announced a plan to close six elementary schools and one middle school because
of budget problems in the 17,000-student district.
“Our school board didn’t make a snap decision on this,” Livonia EA President Carolyn Norris-Deyell said. “A committee consisting of administrators, parents, teachers, community and board members spent a year formulating a pro-active plan to maintain programs and staff.
“While critics say over and over that ‘the money isn’t going to the classroom,’ I say that the classroom is the teacher. Our Livonia Legacy Committee recognized that the teacher is the key to helping our students achieve and came up with the best plan to retain as many teachers as possible.”
But when the plan was announced in November 2005—to close the six elementary schools and one middle school, and to convert three middle schools into schools for fifth and sixth grade students—the outcry was immediate, Norris-Deyell said.
“Parents didn’t want to lose their neighborhood schools, and they didn’t want to see their kids bused to schools across town,” Norris-Deyell said.
“I can understand the reaction. Parents and children are losing their relationship with teachers at their old school, and students will have to make new friends at a new school. That’s sometimes difficult for young children.”
Angry parents opposing the plan tried to recall five school board members last summer. “Thankfully, the recall failed,” Norris-Deyell said. “We worked hard opposing the recall.”
While the Livonia plan divided the community, “it was done for the good of the district,” she said. “If we had the funding we need for education, this would not have happened.”
Operating on 'pencils and paper' budget presents a challenge
Mary
Fox laments that many small school districts must operate on a “pencils
and paper” budget to deliver quality education in today’s high
technology/computer world.
“We sometimes struggle to buy classroom supplies,” said Fox, an English teacher at Fowler High School, northwest of Lansing. “It’s hard for us to keep up with technology, it’s so expensive. As teachers, we can be as up-to-date as possible in our skills, but we also need equipment so we do the best we can for students.”
For the most part, this 500-plus student school district has been spared staff reductions in these troubling financial times.
“It’s difficult to make cuts, because we’re pretty much operating from a barebones budget,” said Fox, in her 37th year of teaching. “In our district, we sometimes delay buying what we need—we’ve delayed some maintenance, we’ve delayed buying textbooks.”
Fowler teachers work hard to overcome barriers to learning caused by lean budgets.
“We’re very fortunate,” Fox said. “We have an outstanding staff that work hard to upgrade their skills. We can’t afford not to stay on top of things.”
Teachers also lean on each other for support.“In our district, a department is two people—we rely on each other and work well together,” Fox said.
The mutual support can be needed just for survival. “It’s not easy,” she said. “I teach six classes in a seven-hour day, and I have one hour of prep time for four subjects.”
School funding problems aren’t new to Fox and other veteran teachers in Michigan. “It wasn’t that long ago when it was difficult to pass a local millage election,” she said. “We’ll probably always have issues with funding. Teaching is a calling, and we do our best with what we have.”
Jenison teachers feel the stress with 90 parapros gone
The
elimination of 90 parapros in the past two years due to budget cuts in Jenison
Public Schools in Ottawa County
has placed a tremendous burden on classroom teachers in the district.
“This is putting so much back on the classroom teachers,” said Jenison EA President Rich Fink, a second-grade teacher at Rosewood Elementary School, pointing to the loss of 30 paras in 2005 and another 60 in June of 2006.
“We have tried to maintain help in our early intervention programs, but most of the additional support has been lost. It has really hurt our members and is making it much more difficult for us to meet the educational needs of our students.”
Ninety parapros remain in the 4,600-student district, including those required by law for special education students and those working in the lower elementary reading program, Fink said.
The district has been forced to slash nearly $5 million from its budget in the last five years.
“We’re doing the best we can,” Fink said, “but we’re under a lot more pressure. In spite of the cuts, we are providing our students with a high quality educational program.”