Friday, March 19, 2010
By Adam Robak/News Editor
and Zack Rosenfeld/Staff Writer
The Manhattan Beach Education Foundation promised to donate $4.1 million and the Parent Teacher Associations $335,000, respectively, to the district’s budget during the March 8 Manhattan Beach Unified School District board meeting.
As a result, the board was able to lower the cuts to $1.8 million.
“We made restorations based on a combination of input from administrators, teachers and all those involved. We know any cuts are bad for kids, and we really want to try to preserve as many programs on different levels as we can,” school board member Amy Howorth said.
The MBEF donated $1,606,800 to preserve kindergarten through fifth grade class sizes, and $495,000 was donated to keep five MCHS counselors.
Additionally, $140,100 was promised to keep the two positions for the MCHS College and Career Center counselors. The MCHS librarian was also retained with a donation of $89,000.
“We looked at our grants and our donations from the parents and prioritized what we would fund by four basic things,” MBEF President Erika White said. “We looked at the kindergarten through twelfth grade, the parity between the subjects, the input of our donors, and finally what would provide the best education for our students.”
The district was also given a $300,000 grant for the music program. As a result, elementary music teachers and choral music accompanists at MBMS and MCHS and the instructional assistant for instrumental music positions will be retained.
“Without the great programs at the elementary and middle schools we wouldn’t have these high quality ensembles at Mira Costa, three of which were invited to Carnegie Hall,” senior Emily Wibberley.
At the sixth through twelfth grade Math level, .8 Full Time Equivalents were cut. Also, .4 FTE’s from the secondary Social Studies, one teacher from secondary Spanish, and .6 FTE’s from English were cut. In addition, .2 FTE’s in Art, .6 FTE’s General Physical education, .2 FTE’s in Biology, .4 FTE’s in Physics, .2 FTE’s in PACE, .2 FTE’s in CAHSEE and 1.6 FTE’s of counselors were cut.
“The board did a good job spreading the cuts throughout each subject. Although class sizes will be big, it is important that we were able to keep class size reduction in English classes so that we could keep the Morgan-Hart program funding our district.” said school board representative and senior Sarah Keasler.
At the elementary level, 10 teachers were proposed to be cut, along with two FTE’s in General Education Physical Education.
Other programs and positions being cut were the Mira Costa AVID program, one nurse position, and .5 FTE from the School Psychologist, rounding out into a total of 20.7 FTE’s cut.
Originally, the board proposed to cut $8 million from the district over the next three years and $6.5 million for the 2010-11 school year. The MBEF and PTA donations have allowed the district to change the budget plans.
“This is a significant change for the better for this district. Now there will be much fewer pink slips given out to teachers, resulting in more jobs being kept,” school board member Ellen Rosenberg said.
Leave a Reply