Lamar Thames

School districts across the state of Florida are wrestling mightily with the tasks of making draconian cuts in their budgets. School Board members are losing sleep, superintendents are visibly depressed and teachers are all on edge, wondering if they will have jobs in the coming months.

But what are the parents saying? In one county, at least, we don’t know publicly what the parents are saying, except for those who have called their school board members. While Clay County school officials have urged teachers and parents to send them their ideas on how to cut the school budget and to contact their legislators to appeal for more funding for education, there hasn’t been that uproariously loud voice from the community protesting the cuts. At least not yet.

And there may not be. The School Board will hold a workshop at 4 p.m. Monday, March 2, during which it will hear recommendations on school by school staff allocations that will basically cost abut 450 people their jobs. No comments are allowed during workshops. The board has held two previous workshops about the school cuts without comments and the agenda item to discuss them was pulled from last week’s regular School Board meeting, where comments were allowed. Thus, members of the public have been effectively prevented from speaking out about the proposals so far. 

The board on Monday will convene a public hearing at the end of the workshop, allow public comment, and then vote on the allocations. Whether it is intentional, this arrangement could greatly stifle any public comment the community will have about the cuts, which could possibly include all sports in the county, a popular music teacher whose annual productions have attracted thousands to sold-out performances year after year, computer teachers, PE teachers and reading and math coaches, not to mention some 200 other classroom teachers. All with hardly a whimper of public protest from parents. This is our school district and our voices deserve to be heard.

I want to know what is the hurry? Superintendent Ben Wortham wants to get the allocations nailed down so that the budget can get set for next year by the end of March. Granted, that would be an admirable goal in normal times. But these are not normal times. Why must the Clay County school system rush through this process with a self-proposed deadline when the district likely won’t know exactly how much it will receive from the state until the Legislature finishes its deliberations possibly in April? If the board approves the school allocations now and the Legislature has a change of heart (stranger things have happend, now haven’t they?), a lot of those teachers facing termination will have suffered unnecessary anxiety. Trust me, I know what that is like and it is not a pleasant experience. So, I appeal to the School Board: Listen, learn and delay your decision until the public has had a chance to absorb all of the information that has been thrown at them. 

Gov. Charlie Crist wants to use the state’s federal stimulus money to help balance the budget and I understand both the pros and cons of this issue. But why does it have to be all or nothing? Why can’t the state use some of the stimulus money to plug some of the holes in education funding (do we want to remain dead last in per pupil funding forever?) while at the same time fixing some of our other taxing inequities. 

The same could be true on the local level. I was shocked at the difference in the amount of money Clay County football coaches received compared to what Duval County pays their coaches. If you didn’t see today’s Times-Union report, Clay pays football head coaches $6,370 while Duval’s is $3,994. Why the difference? Why not cut the amount of supplements, rather than the whole thing, and even the numbers of coaches at each school. I guarantee most schools could get parents to fill in as assistant coaches. The district says that cutting all supplements (including athletics, arts, music, etc.,) it would save $5 million. I am sure the savings would go even higher if by cutting all supplements, athletic teams would cease to exist. 

On a personal note, I think the Clay County community and Paterson Elementary School will suffer a great injustice if music teacher Evan Gould is given his walking papers by Principal Terry Grieninger. Gould has positively impacted at least as many students as almost any other teacher in the county during the 15 or so years he has produced top-flight musical productions at that school. The musicals drew sold-out crowds to the large school auditorium during three performances every year. I can vouch for the quality of each and every one of the shows, including my favorite “Annie,” which was better than both the productio at the Orange Park Community Theatre. And we are talking about third-, fourth-, fifth- and sixth-grade performances. Bravo, Evan!