We Need to Fight for Our School’s Budget!! « I.S.A. – International Studies Academy San Francisco

We Need to Fight for Our School’s Budget!!

By fiercemom Tuesday March 9, 2010

I just got back from the Middle School parent potluck, where we all had to hear some extremely hard news about next year’s funding cuts to the school. Our good Principal Matt Livingston stood up in front of us parents wearing his Willie-Brown fedora, his eyes tired but his shoulders unbowed, and broke it to us bravely, straightforward, with nary a flinch : ISA will quite probably face a school budget shortfall of over a quarter of a million dollars in the 2010 – 2011 school year.

We will lose teachers. Our class sizes, which have in many classes been well under the 25 student cap, will max out. We will lose a whole period out of the school day, which means many classes that enrich students’ school experience and make them WANT to come to school (such as dance, band, art, or foreign language) will no longer be available. There will be no support classes, where kids who are failing core academic subjects can get extra help and reinforcement during the regular school day in a class setting. And this list of losses is by no means complete.

As Principal Livingston was speaking i thought about the furor over the schools in California that had been deemed “the worst of the worst”, how the federal government had allotted these schools four billion dollars to “fix” themselves. i thought about how, in order for those schools to access this money they had to a) convert to charter schools, b) fire the principal and not less than 50% of the staff, c) close the school entirely and shuffle the students off to any other higher-performing school, or d) put in place a laundry list of changes, including firing the principal and increasing instruction time. I thought about how four billion dollars was a lot of money, even shared out piecemeal.

The thing is, we don’t need too many sweeping changes at our school. It was beautifully reorganized before my family came, with choices in curriculum and class sizes that rivaled many private schools. We have committed, caring faculty, and we have a huge, spacious building; we have administrators who are down to go to bat for us, and we have an amazing facility. ALL WE NEED IS THE MONEY TO RUN IT THE WAY IT SHOULD BE RUN.

It frustrates me to watch how our schools and our teachers are being taken to task for perceived failure on one hand, while meanwhile they are being financially starved for the very tools they need to raise test scores and graduation rates (teachers, support personnel, technology, instructional supplies, and supportive instruction for kids in trouble). It’s a Catch-22 made in hell.

And I’m mad as hell.

The Western Association of Schools and Colleges visitors had some great suggestions as to whom to express our feelings about this important issue… write or call (do not email, they don’t read them!) the California state senator and assemblyperson for YOUR district. Here is a link where you can enter your zip code to find out who they are in your particular area of town:

http://www.legislature.ca.gov/port-zipsearch.html

Also, I have included the contact information for the state senator and assemblyperson for the district in which the school is located (senatorial district 3, assembly district 13):

Senator Mark Leno

Local offices :

455 Golden Gate Ave.

SF, CA 94102

415 557 1300

3501 Civic Center Drive

Room 425

San Rafael, CA 94903

415 479 6612

Sacramento:

State Capitol

Sacramento, CA 94248 - 0001

916 – 651 – 4003

Assemblyman Tom Ammiano

Local offices :

455 Golden Gate

Suite 14300

San Francisco, CA 94102

415 – 557 – 3013

Sacramento:

State Capitol

Room 4005

Sacramento, CA 94249 – 0013

916 – 319 – 2013

Here is a link to two of the California Department of Education pages that have more information on the “persistently underachieving schools”, and what will be done about them:

http://www.cde.ca.gov/ta/ac/pl/index.asp