Archive: News

The Ithaca City School Board grappled with scheduling problems Tuesday, created by the need to cut teachers. Voters had ratified an austerity budget at the recent election. Now the school administration is beginning the process of change needed to follow that budget.

Cutting some of the teaching positions requires changes in the music, art, and physical education classes in the elementary schools.  At the school board meeting, several teachers and community members opposed those changes.


Music teacher Greg McQuade presented a petition from parents at Northeast Elementary who opposed the schedule. “Kulp Auditorium is getting a state of the art rehearsal and performance space, but this schedule is cutting off music education at the roots,” he said.

Christine Finnegan, an art teacher at Enfield Elementary School, said “A one-size-fits-all approach for music, art, and physical education doesn’t work.  The Board said that we need a team of principals to discuss this, but only one meeting has taken place.”

Martha Frommelt, of the Fine Arts Booster Group, noted that the group has pledged fundraising to a new program, Arts Alive, to provide extra funding for arts and music. “It is similar to what the sports boosters are doing,” she said. And, she added, the group believed that the proposed scheduling “will have a pedagogical impact on all subjects.”

Board member Josh Bornstein said that the Curriculum and Instruction committee would look at the scheduling issue.  Brad Grainger said that he understood that scheduling could be changed for each school, but questioned that “the schedule lays out to cut three FTEs (full time equivalent positions), and there are only two cut in the budget.”

In response to these concerns, Superintendent Judith Pastel provided a detailed explanation of the scheduling of music, art, and physical education in the elementary schools. “I don’t think this was presented very well at some of the schools,” she said. “People may not have understood well enough what we were changing.”


Pastel showed the group a series of complicated scheduling tables, indicating both the general plan for scheduling special music, arts, and phys ed teachers into the schools, as well as specific plans for each school. Because every school has different sizes of facilities and classes, each school will need to make its own version of the schedule.  Once that is done, Pastel said, the central administration will decide where these specialized teachers might best work in two different schools. 

However, she said, the administration has been focusing on how retirements and resignations will affect the need to cut teaching positions.   “Can we save jobs by moving people into other positions?  That has been our top priority, not the schedules,” Pastel said.

Board member Seth Peacock expressed confusion.  “What’s my role as a board member in this?” he asked.  Bornstein answered “We are arbiters of public discussion.  And we have a board committee to deal with problems that might arise.”

Bornstein added that he wasn’t expecting to learn about scheduling issues in such detail.

----
v6i20