Oceanside School District’s $160 million budget proposal features restructured programs

Posted

Oceanside School District’s elementary school-level programs, including Project Extra, Makerspace, mental health and wellness and coding/STEM, would be restructured starting this fall under the district’s proposed 2020-21 budget.

 

The Board of Education adopted the proposed $160 million budget during a virtual meeting on April 22. The spending plan includes a tax levy, or total revenue raised from taxpayers, of $130 million, a 3.3 percent increase from the 2019-20 school year.

 

School officials crafted the budget “conservatively,” said Jerel Cokley, the district’s assistant superintendent of business, based on a decrease in state aid and 13 retirements in the district. Projected state aid dropped about $800,000 from the 2019-20 school year, from $23.1 million to $22.3 million.

 

“We have very responsibly taken in that information in terms of what it means financially, but also what opportunities it might present to us as a district,” Superintendent Dr. Phyllis Harrington said on the video call. “We recognize these are trying times, and we still feel very strongly that it is our primary responsibility to move the district forward.”

 

Several elementary school programs, including Project Extra, would be restructured in the 2020-21 school year because of teacher retirements and to meet state mandates for new curricula in computer science and coding, Diane Provvido, the district’s assistant superintendent of curriculum, instruction and research, explained.

 

The retirements of Project Extra teacher Angela Abend, as well as one STEM teacher and three music teachers in the elementary schools, presented opportunities to restructure programs.

 

Project Extra is the district’s gifted and enrichment program for fourth through sixth grades, which traditionally saw children leave their home schools once a week to engage in activities of a specialized nature. The activities nurture children and provide them with opportunities to learn that are commensurate with their abilities.

 

The program normally ran for half a day once a week and included students from all elementary-level buildings in one program. Some students took buses to another school. Starting this fall, if the budget plan is approved by voters, there would be one Project Extra teacher per building, and the program would take place during a “specials” period so students would not miss core instruction or need to leave their buildings, Provvido explained.

 

The selection process for the Project Extra program would remain the same, as well as the number of students in the program, but it would be spread out across all elementary school buildings now, Harrington added.

 

Students’ specials periods would shift as a result of music teacher retirements and a new state mandate for coding lessons. Rather than two music classes in a six-day cycle, students would have one music class. To replace the music class, students in first through third grades would have a makerspace/STEM/coding class. Students in fourth through sixth grades would have a mental health and well-being lesson, taught by two new health and wellness teachers and one current teacher who started this school year.

 

Previously, mental health and makerspace programs were “push-in,” meaning they cut into a teacher’s core instruction of English, math, history and science. The restructuring would allow more time for core instruction, school officials said.

 

Harrington noted that without teacher retirements, the new arrangement of programs would not be financially possible. She argued the plan is a sound solution to ongoing challenges of pushing in new instruction and interrupting core curriculum.

 

The district’s budget vote will also include a separate ballot measure about the use of capital reserve funds for renovations to Oceanside High School science labs, at a cost not to exceed $3.4 million, which would be at no additional cost to taxpayers.

 

The budget hearing via video conference is scheduled for May 6, but is subject to change. The vote will take place at an unknown date in June from 7 a.m. to 9 p.m. at School No. 6’s Merle Avenue gymnasium. For updates on the budget vote, visit oceansideschools.org.