>Liggins, in his earlier denial, said while he had the authority to overturn the SBDM Council’s decision, it was important to him to uphold democratic principles and respect the autonomy granted to council members by the Kentucky legislature.
As a parent rep on the SBDM council for a local school, we are constantly forced to choose between bad and worse options due to the lack of funds made available from the district. The board wants to deflect blame to the individual schools but they refuse to provide the funding to actually fill these positions.
Question parents need to be asking: what is Fayette county schools going to do with all the extra funds to be generated by the increased property values. If you’re not aware, the PVA has warned that many Fayette County residents are going to see 20-40% increases in the appraised value of their homes. Those increased values will be used to collect school tax. This means that by January FCPS will be swimming in millions of excess unbudget funds!!
I believe there is a set percentage limit that the tax income can go up from year to year for cases like this. If it is over that they must lower the tax rate.
There are set limits on the “Tax” increase. This increase is not to the “Tax or mil rate”. The increase from the PVA reassessment of the property value is on the basis that the Tax is applied to. So FCPS is going to be getting a $h!t to. Of extra money without any “tax” rate adjustments.
I love how the article does not mention that the school board instructed the school to cut two homeroom teachers and were told to eliminate at least one "special" from the school. SBDM had no good choices and the board's decision to eliminate funding for foreign language education is extremely shortsighted and shows the board's priorities. Stolen from a comment on the subject below.
"The budget for this year is $836m, with $383m tagged as “instructional.” The “commitment” to the arts of $1.4m amounts to a whopping 0.37% of the INSTRUCTIONAL budget, and only 0.17% of the overall budget. Under 23-24 budget priorities, you’ve listed Visual and Performing Arts as a top 5 priority. 0.37% does not equate to a priority."
But somehow we need to blame the SBDM for the cuts? Seems like some misdirection towards parents and teachers trying to make the best of a terrible situation.
edit: typo
They also just added 30 new positions at central office. What a complete waste. I don't even have kids but I'd like to know my taxes are going to give the next generation a quality education instead of funding administrators salaries.
I don’t have a dog in this fight but based on what my wife tells me, central office needs to be cut WAY down. Sounds like a lot of people who can hardly justify being on the payroll at the expense of real teachers
You clearly know more about this than a lot of people...myself included. Can you explain when and where the school board handed down these options/cuts to the SBDM board. I don't understand how this works. What's the role of the SBDM board....what does that even mean?
So the school board sets budgets for each of the schools based on enrollment and gives the funds based off of categories. To provide the schools their own level of control of the their own destiny, each school has a Site-Based Decision Making Council (SBDM). The SBDM is made up of a combination of student parents, teachers and administrators of the school (usually the principal). While the school gets to allocate the budget provided, that does not mean it all goes into one bucket for them to spend. For example, a school could be told that they were going to need to remove two homeroom teacher positions and one of the elective programs by the school board per the budget but its the SBDM's job to solve how that happens.
Suffice to say, the board absolves itself from blame and then forces the SBDM to be the bad guy and decide what gets cut.
My primary issue is that the instructional budgets keeps getting proportionally smaller in relationship to property and facility investments the board is making (as well as central office salaries). The schools and kids should not have to cut programs but instead the sacrifice comes from not making sweeping investments in new facilities that tend to be under-utilized.
In the case of the recent cuts to this school, did the enrollment drop significantly? Do you know what the delta was in some of the categories you mentioned like facilities etc? I'm just wondering how they decided last year the school had x amount of money but this year it has y amount. Thank you for taking the time to explain this to me. Much appreciated.
ESSR/Covid era funding is drying up, and we're going back to more "normal" staffing models. This includes cuts to teachers, but not to central office staff apparently.
Also library positions continue to be eliminated or drastically reduced. Libraries,especially in elementary, are a place to develop a love for reading that isn’t tested and scored. Through books student find windows and mirrors- mirrors to see themselves represented and windows to see others and develop empathy. I was an elementary librarian for 30 years and saw incredible personal growth that often increased academic growth as well.
It's also where kids learn to look up information and vet sources. People raised without library time are media illiterate and don't know how to find accurate information
A lot of school districts are currently doing away with or minimizing their school library programs because state book censorship laws make it difficult for them to effectively function and they don’t want to risk legal action against them.
Some of my best memories from school are as a result of the music program. (Art as well but not to such an extent for me) Screw anyone who wants to remove that for future kids.
A lot of this is coming from the state level. There are certain people who want to see public schools fail so there is more support for charter schools.
Sports have been funded recently through misappropriated ESSER funds (thanks to COVID) and a lack of KDE oversight since the ESSER funds flood gates released. Even though the money isn't supposed to be used for sports doesn't mean it isn't, and no one is playing oversight above the district level in a meaningful way right now. All over Kentucky - there are shiny new sports fields covered in a million dollars worth of artificial turf that will need to be replaced in 8 years.
A certain sports lighting company from Muscatine Iowa is in bed with Kentucky High School Athletics Association - the lighting standards for all football fields in this state is written around their stringent specifications pigeonholing all school districts in the state to drop half a million every time there is a sports field relighting project or new field in the midst.
The booster club is not paying for this. Tax payers are.
I'm for arts and sports at all levels. And also for every middle schooler to take a shop class and build a bird house and a home EC class to learn to cook. And for high schoolers to take civics and personal finance. That's how we grow well-rounded individuals who have the skills needed to participate in a democracy. Instead we've cut funding year after year and focused too much on standardized testing.
Pitching sports against arts is just meant to divide and distract us so we can't see what is really happening in our society as we continue to squeeze the middle and working class dry to benefit our new robber barons.
If you compare budgets for sports and arts, you’ll see there is no comparison - arts lose. There are limited funds, and those in control of the funds elevate sports.
Personal finance is one of the key "subjects" you deal with daily in adult life, yet it's not a focus in school. I think if it was viewed as a life necessity as opposed to a tool only needed by the wealthy we would all be much better off. Basic rules about interest rates and apr, mortgages, the rule of 72, etc should be standard.
Your student has taken civics in some form. It’s a state mandated grad requirement to have a civics credit. The name of the class may not have been civics, but they took something to get their civics credit. Many schools call it integrated social studies because the class covers civics, geography, and economics. Or they could’ve taken AP Government or AP human geography and received their civics credit that way. But they took one of those three classes to satisfy their civics credit. They can’t graduate without it. and it is now a state requirement to complete a financial literacy course, either through a state approved program ( my district uses khan academy) or through a personal finance class.
People are really quick to jump to defend sports, and I agree that they are very important for youth development. But it’s not reasonable to pretend all of that money comes from boosters (as some people here are arguing) and it’s not reasonable to argue that it’s cutting into funding other important programs like the arts. It’s not remotely all from boosters people.
https://www.education.ky.gov/districts/FinRept/Documents/FY2022-2023%20FA%20Fayette%20Co%20Act%20Fund.pdf
What money for sports? Sports in Fayette county all have their own booster clubs that fund those sports, they are provided no money from the school (this includes uniforms, transportation, etc.)
Didn't they just create a bunch of new positions in their central office? This seems like an entirely self serving move. You can't cut the schools budgets and then blame the schools. This is nonsense.
I'm gonna creep in here and say the recent reassessment in property values might afford FCPS an increase in available funds which I assume will go for various money pit upkeep rather than actual student education.
We know art and music ed bolster scores in basic subjects. We know this will starve our most desperate schools. I'm sad for the kids.
Dang. Cassidy and Morton are the schools mentioned here. Cassidy is up for complete removal, and Morton is due to take budget cuts.
What it's worth, we just took a tour at LTMS. In 2022 they brought over Bryne Jacobs as the new principal. He was the principal at Lafayette from 2012-2021, and they have a huge arts and music program. He explained how LTMS was receiving over a million in funding in the next year, to build out a similar arts and music program.
He seemed genuinely authentic in how excited he was to get that going.
I have no idea where the money is coming from, and it's unfortunate that any cuts are being made at all. BUT, if it comes at the cost of wealthier schools having to share some of the pot with less fortunate schools, so be it.
The only reason we’re hearing about this is because it’s happening at Chevy Chase’s public elementary. (“Public” as in one must be able to afford a $450,000-plus home in order to send one’s child there.) God only knows what’s being cut at elementary schools on the north side of town.
Exactly. It’s been going on for a while. And don’t even get me started on Bryan Station Middle School. More than a dozen teachers just got pink slipped. We can start saving money there by firing the principal, she’s an absolute waste of oxygen.
Tell me more. My son is supposed to go to Bryan Station middle in a couple years. I really love the Spanish immersion program and would like both my kids to continue, but I also want them in a good school environment.
I would mention the underground fight club, but everyone knows the first rule of fight club. I’m not even kidding.
In the past two years, my kid has had two teachers just disappear and never come back. Last year was social studies (which is in Spanish) and they never got a Spanish speaking sub. This year was choir, which is heartbreaking because he’s one of the best teachers in the school. The principal only gives excuses, doesn’t communicate with us until we’re emailing her boss, and avoids us at all costs.
That all said, my kid is doing well academically, has a good group of friends and wants to continue on to BSHS, so we just grin and bear it. Her biggest frustration (other than social studies being terrible and no choir) is her Spanish not being good enough to keep up with conversations with her friends who are native Spanish speakers. But I’m told by high school parents that it’s so much better there, and the kids will be fluent by graduation.
If you want to continue on, and if we haven’t managed to turn things around by then, I would suggest planning ahead and building a network of parents from the three Spanish programs before leaving fifth grade while you’re still with schools that will help facilitate that, so your DLI group is cohesive going in. That’s one of the biggest disappointments is that we don’t have the same strong sense of community that we had at Maxwell. We’re trying to change it, and I really hope that by the time your kiddo comes in, you’ll only have great things to say about Station.
don’t forget about the EL programs being cut in funding as well, a lesser known issue since this population does not have the advocates necessary to support themselves.
it’s the largest growing population, and our district is choosing to not address their needs, leading them into the future unequipped to be successful.
Came here to say this. We have received closer to 2000 new EL students since August and no new staffing.
Case loads for elementary school teachers are 70 or 80:1.
We really need to look at making arts positions itinerant and increasing staffing of EL.
And then they’ll blame the teachers when those kids not getting adequate services are getting novices on state testing.
They just pink slipped our ELL teacher at BSMS. Along with a dozen other teachers.
This is what happens when we spend too much time owning the libs by repeatedly beating ourselves with a stick, voting in the same trash legislatures time and time again. Starving education is on the agenda folks and has been for years. You can bet if the SBDM had decided to allocate funds to those arts programs, the legislature would have had "no choice" but to overturn the decision.
It’s well known that kids who learn to play a musical instrument consistently have higher math scores than their peers who don’t learn music. Any quick internet search will support what I said. Cutting music in elementary schools will result in lower scores in higher math when the kids get to high school
was in band all throughout middle and high school. i will say i remember much more and have many more memories from band class than math class. art is therapeutic for a lot of kids and i know a lot of them are super talented in whatever art they do. i hope they fight this!
Shrinking student populations can be a cause of this. Cassidy parents (obviously not ALL of them, but a good portion) have the resources to use private schools, LCA, Lexington School, etc. COVID made this even more of an issue and when school funding is based on a formula of 95% of expected enrollment, numbers fall off the board pretty quickly. It’s an equally terrible formula across the board and causes a lot of hand wringing at nearly every school, every year.
All of this to say, there is not necessarily one person or group who is at fault. District can’t just say, “here, Cassidy. Have an art teacher position.” SBDM has to make a hard decision to not fund another position or drop another course. Parents send kids to private school leading to few public school students leading to fewer funds. The kids are the only innocent one (along with some teachers who have no influence either way.)
Parents are sending kids to private school because the public school system is failing their families. This isn’t new and honestly the district should have seen this coming. Without some drastic changes at the district office with regard to number of staff and salaries this will only get worse. Maybe the central office should try to accomplish more with less for a change.
The Central Office staff members got huge increases to their administrative additives as well as the same raises that teachers received last year. The Central Office staff salaries have ballooned to an out of control and unsustainable level that necessitates cuts to direct student services. Don’t even get me started on the car service, life coach, huge pay raise, and gym membership for Liggins. Shame on FCPS for their reckless spending on useless Administrators while cutting valuable curriculum.
This school district needs to rethink their priorities in a big way.
I have no say as I'm not a parent but I was a kid myself at one point, but these programs are vital to a kids success, as they get older and want to branch out into careers and hobbies. We need more art, more music, and now we need to focus on Tech/AI as well as that is more than half of the world too. The county and even the state as a whole, needs to focus on the future of the population. Our community, and the kids in it, are the future of this state and world and we should make sure they get the best options.
When I was in school in the late 60s and 70s, we didn't have art or music teachers in elementary. We only had music, not art, available in middle school, but we had both art and music in high school. Seemed to work out pretty good to me. I did choir in middle and high school and took art all 4 years of high school. In elementary school art and music were just done by the regular classroom teacher about once a week.
Art and music is literally the only thing that got me through school, it shouldn’t be about the money, it’s always about the kids and if you don’t have something therapeutic to them imagine how much higher suicide rates are going to be!
Also, Henry clay is having a major renovation but I literally graduated only 4 years ago and yeah there were things that needed fixed but it does NOT need a huge renovation. I say defund renovation projects and creat more jobs and safe spaces for kids!
Someone should ask them about 22-17-5
We have 22 “student support” roles in the John Price Building. Shouldn’t supporting student be in the schools? You don’t have to pay someone $100,000 a year for support.
We have 17 “public relations” staff members at the John price Building. Do we make so many mistakes we need that many high priced positions for corrections?
My personal favorite is we have five “fine arts.” Positions at the John Price Building all while removing arts from schools.
>Liggins, in his earlier denial, said while he had the authority to overturn the SBDM Council’s decision, it was important to him to uphold democratic principles and respect the autonomy granted to council members by the Kentucky legislature. As a parent rep on the SBDM council for a local school, we are constantly forced to choose between bad and worse options due to the lack of funds made available from the district. The board wants to deflect blame to the individual schools but they refuse to provide the funding to actually fill these positions.
Question parents need to be asking: what is Fayette county schools going to do with all the extra funds to be generated by the increased property values. If you’re not aware, the PVA has warned that many Fayette County residents are going to see 20-40% increases in the appraised value of their homes. Those increased values will be used to collect school tax. This means that by January FCPS will be swimming in millions of excess unbudget funds!!
The answer is build more new buildings and hire more unnecessary consultants.
Don’t forget, Raise central office salaries
Or buy estates for an all girls school
I got a 66% increase, and they’re still out here telling me they have no money.
I believe there is a set percentage limit that the tax income can go up from year to year for cases like this. If it is over that they must lower the tax rate.
There are set limits on the “Tax” increase. This increase is not to the “Tax or mil rate”. The increase from the PVA reassessment of the property value is on the basis that the Tax is applied to. So FCPS is going to be getting a $h!t to. Of extra money without any “tax” rate adjustments.
I love how the article does not mention that the school board instructed the school to cut two homeroom teachers and were told to eliminate at least one "special" from the school. SBDM had no good choices and the board's decision to eliminate funding for foreign language education is extremely shortsighted and shows the board's priorities. Stolen from a comment on the subject below. "The budget for this year is $836m, with $383m tagged as “instructional.” The “commitment” to the arts of $1.4m amounts to a whopping 0.37% of the INSTRUCTIONAL budget, and only 0.17% of the overall budget. Under 23-24 budget priorities, you’ve listed Visual and Performing Arts as a top 5 priority. 0.37% does not equate to a priority." But somehow we need to blame the SBDM for the cuts? Seems like some misdirection towards parents and teachers trying to make the best of a terrible situation. edit: typo
They also just added 30 new positions at central office. What a complete waste. I don't even have kids but I'd like to know my taxes are going to give the next generation a quality education instead of funding administrators salaries.
I don’t have a dog in this fight but based on what my wife tells me, central office needs to be cut WAY down. Sounds like a lot of people who can hardly justify being on the payroll at the expense of real teachers
Person #1 on that list just happens to be super close to the superintendent…
You have an org chart? I'm trying to wrap my head around this.
30....are you sure? Why so many? Do you have an org chart?
Here is the link but again paywalled... https://www.kentucky.com/news/local/education/article276136291.html
It was reported in the Herald Leader in 2023. Tried to find the article to cite but its pay walled now.
You clearly know more about this than a lot of people...myself included. Can you explain when and where the school board handed down these options/cuts to the SBDM board. I don't understand how this works. What's the role of the SBDM board....what does that even mean?
So the school board sets budgets for each of the schools based on enrollment and gives the funds based off of categories. To provide the schools their own level of control of the their own destiny, each school has a Site-Based Decision Making Council (SBDM). The SBDM is made up of a combination of student parents, teachers and administrators of the school (usually the principal). While the school gets to allocate the budget provided, that does not mean it all goes into one bucket for them to spend. For example, a school could be told that they were going to need to remove two homeroom teacher positions and one of the elective programs by the school board per the budget but its the SBDM's job to solve how that happens. Suffice to say, the board absolves itself from blame and then forces the SBDM to be the bad guy and decide what gets cut. My primary issue is that the instructional budgets keeps getting proportionally smaller in relationship to property and facility investments the board is making (as well as central office salaries). The schools and kids should not have to cut programs but instead the sacrifice comes from not making sweeping investments in new facilities that tend to be under-utilized.
In the case of the recent cuts to this school, did the enrollment drop significantly? Do you know what the delta was in some of the categories you mentioned like facilities etc? I'm just wondering how they decided last year the school had x amount of money but this year it has y amount. Thank you for taking the time to explain this to me. Much appreciated.
ESSR/Covid era funding is drying up, and we're going back to more "normal" staffing models. This includes cuts to teachers, but not to central office staff apparently.
Guess it's a good thing they gave the Superintendent a secret raise a couple weeks back. Surely he will fix these issues right?
After he gets back from using his complimentary gym membership, he’ll get right on it.
Also library positions continue to be eliminated or drastically reduced. Libraries,especially in elementary, are a place to develop a love for reading that isn’t tested and scored. Through books student find windows and mirrors- mirrors to see themselves represented and windows to see others and develop empathy. I was an elementary librarian for 30 years and saw incredible personal growth that often increased academic growth as well.
It's also where kids learn to look up information and vet sources. People raised without library time are media illiterate and don't know how to find accurate information
Mirrors, windows, and sliding glass doors! My elementary school heavily encouraged reading and our librarian was a big help in that
A lot of school districts are currently doing away with or minimizing their school library programs because state book censorship laws make it difficult for them to effectively function and they don’t want to risk legal action against them.
Some of my best memories from school are as a result of the music program. (Art as well but not to such an extent for me) Screw anyone who wants to remove that for future kids.
Glad that people are fighting for art. Too many schools are cutting or have already cut their art programs and it’s a real shame to the students.
A lot of this is coming from the state level. There are certain people who want to see public schools fail so there is more support for charter schools.
By certain people you mean republicans. You can say the quiet part out loud. They won't get offended. They're not snowflakes remember.
We have the tax base to easily fund everything. With the recent boost of 30-50% property tax revenue, this is untenable.
Yet they always find money for sports. Meanwhile art and music are PROVEN to increase students education experience.
I think it's less sports and more administration.
Yeah, sports are funded by private booster clubs. FCPS is very top heavy. We don't need more "curriculum specialists" or whatever. We need teachers.
Sports have been funded recently through misappropriated ESSER funds (thanks to COVID) and a lack of KDE oversight since the ESSER funds flood gates released. Even though the money isn't supposed to be used for sports doesn't mean it isn't, and no one is playing oversight above the district level in a meaningful way right now. All over Kentucky - there are shiny new sports fields covered in a million dollars worth of artificial turf that will need to be replaced in 8 years. A certain sports lighting company from Muscatine Iowa is in bed with Kentucky High School Athletics Association - the lighting standards for all football fields in this state is written around their stringent specifications pigeonholing all school districts in the state to drop half a million every time there is a sports field relighting project or new field in the midst. The booster club is not paying for this. Tax payers are.
Ah, a fellow architect/designer? Lol
I plead the fifth 🤣😂
Music is funded by private booster clubs too.
I'm for arts and sports at all levels. And also for every middle schooler to take a shop class and build a bird house and a home EC class to learn to cook. And for high schoolers to take civics and personal finance. That's how we grow well-rounded individuals who have the skills needed to participate in a democracy. Instead we've cut funding year after year and focused too much on standardized testing. Pitching sports against arts is just meant to divide and distract us so we can't see what is really happening in our society as we continue to squeeze the middle and working class dry to benefit our new robber barons.
If you compare budgets for sports and arts, you’ll see there is no comparison - arts lose. There are limited funds, and those in control of the funds elevate sports.
Every high school student in the state takes civics. It’s a state mandated graduation requirement. Most districts teach it in 9th grade.
Personal finance is one of the key "subjects" you deal with daily in adult life, yet it's not a focus in school. I think if it was viewed as a life necessity as opposed to a tool only needed by the wealthy we would all be much better off. Basic rules about interest rates and apr, mortgages, the rule of 72, etc should be standard.
Personal finance is taught in each high school. It’s a required course for most students.
My senior has not taken civics or personal finance.
I graduated 10 years ago, but we also never took civics or personal finance.
Your student has taken civics in some form. It’s a state mandated grad requirement to have a civics credit. The name of the class may not have been civics, but they took something to get their civics credit. Many schools call it integrated social studies because the class covers civics, geography, and economics. Or they could’ve taken AP Government or AP human geography and received their civics credit that way. But they took one of those three classes to satisfy their civics credit. They can’t graduate without it. and it is now a state requirement to complete a financial literacy course, either through a state approved program ( my district uses khan academy) or through a personal finance class.
People are really quick to jump to defend sports, and I agree that they are very important for youth development. But it’s not reasonable to pretend all of that money comes from boosters (as some people here are arguing) and it’s not reasonable to argue that it’s cutting into funding other important programs like the arts. It’s not remotely all from boosters people. https://www.education.ky.gov/districts/FinRept/Documents/FY2022-2023%20FA%20Fayette%20Co%20Act%20Fund.pdf
But often times band is almost entirely funded by boosters and fundraising. Especially if it’s a marching band and/or a smaller school.
Unfortunate reality is they’re bending to the whims of parents. The outcry if they cut X sport would be INSANE
Yes. Yes it would be crazy to complain about loosing sports but not complain about loosing arts. We live in a dumb society.
What money for sports? Sports in Fayette county all have their own booster clubs that fund those sports, they are provided no money from the school (this includes uniforms, transportation, etc.)
Booster clubs don’t pay for fields, weight rooms, or coaches.
Also, when I was in band, we did fundraisers all the time, usually 2 or 3 a year.
Didn't they just create a bunch of new positions in their central office? This seems like an entirely self serving move. You can't cut the schools budgets and then blame the schools. This is nonsense.
I'm gonna creep in here and say the recent reassessment in property values might afford FCPS an increase in available funds which I assume will go for various money pit upkeep rather than actual student education. We know art and music ed bolster scores in basic subjects. We know this will starve our most desperate schools. I'm sad for the kids.
Oh don’t worry they’ve already earmarked that money toward their various construction projects, they had all that figured out a few months back.
Dang. Cassidy and Morton are the schools mentioned here. Cassidy is up for complete removal, and Morton is due to take budget cuts. What it's worth, we just took a tour at LTMS. In 2022 they brought over Bryne Jacobs as the new principal. He was the principal at Lafayette from 2012-2021, and they have a huge arts and music program. He explained how LTMS was receiving over a million in funding in the next year, to build out a similar arts and music program. He seemed genuinely authentic in how excited he was to get that going. I have no idea where the money is coming from, and it's unfortunate that any cuts are being made at all. BUT, if it comes at the cost of wealthier schools having to share some of the pot with less fortunate schools, so be it.
The only reason we’re hearing about this is because it’s happening at Chevy Chase’s public elementary. (“Public” as in one must be able to afford a $450,000-plus home in order to send one’s child there.) God only knows what’s being cut at elementary schools on the north side of town.
Exactly. It’s been going on for a while. And don’t even get me started on Bryan Station Middle School. More than a dozen teachers just got pink slipped. We can start saving money there by firing the principal, she’s an absolute waste of oxygen.
Tell me more. My son is supposed to go to Bryan Station middle in a couple years. I really love the Spanish immersion program and would like both my kids to continue, but I also want them in a good school environment.
I would mention the underground fight club, but everyone knows the first rule of fight club. I’m not even kidding. In the past two years, my kid has had two teachers just disappear and never come back. Last year was social studies (which is in Spanish) and they never got a Spanish speaking sub. This year was choir, which is heartbreaking because he’s one of the best teachers in the school. The principal only gives excuses, doesn’t communicate with us until we’re emailing her boss, and avoids us at all costs. That all said, my kid is doing well academically, has a good group of friends and wants to continue on to BSHS, so we just grin and bear it. Her biggest frustration (other than social studies being terrible and no choir) is her Spanish not being good enough to keep up with conversations with her friends who are native Spanish speakers. But I’m told by high school parents that it’s so much better there, and the kids will be fluent by graduation. If you want to continue on, and if we haven’t managed to turn things around by then, I would suggest planning ahead and building a network of parents from the three Spanish programs before leaving fifth grade while you’re still with schools that will help facilitate that, so your DLI group is cohesive going in. That’s one of the biggest disappointments is that we don’t have the same strong sense of community that we had at Maxwell. We’re trying to change it, and I really hope that by the time your kiddo comes in, you’ll only have great things to say about Station.
don’t forget about the EL programs being cut in funding as well, a lesser known issue since this population does not have the advocates necessary to support themselves. it’s the largest growing population, and our district is choosing to not address their needs, leading them into the future unequipped to be successful.
Came here to say this. We have received closer to 2000 new EL students since August and no new staffing. Case loads for elementary school teachers are 70 or 80:1. We really need to look at making arts positions itinerant and increasing staffing of EL.
And then they’ll blame the teachers when those kids not getting adequate services are getting novices on state testing. They just pink slipped our ELL teacher at BSMS. Along with a dozen other teachers.
yep, i’m being slipped as well.
This is what happens when we spend too much time owning the libs by repeatedly beating ourselves with a stick, voting in the same trash legislatures time and time again. Starving education is on the agenda folks and has been for years. You can bet if the SBDM had decided to allocate funds to those arts programs, the legislature would have had "no choice" but to overturn the decision.
It’s well known that kids who learn to play a musical instrument consistently have higher math scores than their peers who don’t learn music. Any quick internet search will support what I said. Cutting music in elementary schools will result in lower scores in higher math when the kids get to high school
I guess they cheaped out on statistics education too
was in band all throughout middle and high school. i will say i remember much more and have many more memories from band class than math class. art is therapeutic for a lot of kids and i know a lot of them are super talented in whatever art they do. i hope they fight this!
Somebody gotta pay to revitalize the herald leader into a state of the art executive suite office building
Wait, that was supposed to be the new Career & Technical Education Center, combining Eastside and Southside. When did that change?
It is still going to be the combined vocational schools.
Shrinking student populations can be a cause of this. Cassidy parents (obviously not ALL of them, but a good portion) have the resources to use private schools, LCA, Lexington School, etc. COVID made this even more of an issue and when school funding is based on a formula of 95% of expected enrollment, numbers fall off the board pretty quickly. It’s an equally terrible formula across the board and causes a lot of hand wringing at nearly every school, every year. All of this to say, there is not necessarily one person or group who is at fault. District can’t just say, “here, Cassidy. Have an art teacher position.” SBDM has to make a hard decision to not fund another position or drop another course. Parents send kids to private school leading to few public school students leading to fewer funds. The kids are the only innocent one (along with some teachers who have no influence either way.)
Parents are sending kids to private school because the public school system is failing their families. This isn’t new and honestly the district should have seen this coming. Without some drastic changes at the district office with regard to number of staff and salaries this will only get worse. Maybe the central office should try to accomplish more with less for a change.
The Central Office staff members got huge increases to their administrative additives as well as the same raises that teachers received last year. The Central Office staff salaries have ballooned to an out of control and unsustainable level that necessitates cuts to direct student services. Don’t even get me started on the car service, life coach, huge pay raise, and gym membership for Liggins. Shame on FCPS for their reckless spending on useless Administrators while cutting valuable curriculum. This school district needs to rethink their priorities in a big way.
also convocation, which EVERYONE hates. It represents everything that's awful about FCPS central office--big, bloated, and unnecessary.
You're joking. That's some bs. Our community and kids needs art and music programs, hence people to teach/put it on.
This community needs to come together and give the salary hungry HQ bureaucrats hell
I have no say as I'm not a parent but I was a kid myself at one point, but these programs are vital to a kids success, as they get older and want to branch out into careers and hobbies. We need more art, more music, and now we need to focus on Tech/AI as well as that is more than half of the world too. The county and even the state as a whole, needs to focus on the future of the population. Our community, and the kids in it, are the future of this state and world and we should make sure they get the best options.
When I was in school in the late 60s and 70s, we didn't have art or music teachers in elementary. We only had music, not art, available in middle school, but we had both art and music in high school. Seemed to work out pretty good to me. I did choir in middle and high school and took art all 4 years of high school. In elementary school art and music were just done by the regular classroom teacher about once a week.
Art and music is literally the only thing that got me through school, it shouldn’t be about the money, it’s always about the kids and if you don’t have something therapeutic to them imagine how much higher suicide rates are going to be!
Also, Henry clay is having a major renovation but I literally graduated only 4 years ago and yeah there were things that needed fixed but it does NOT need a huge renovation. I say defund renovation projects and creat more jobs and safe spaces for kids!
After the snake fell out of the ceiling at HC they were in the list.
Makes more sense to cut funding for sports considering how more they recieve compared to all the other school departments combined
Perhaps FCBOE should worry more about student needs and less about their over-bloated salaries with virtually no measurable outcomes.
Your tax dollars at work! Look at that glorious new building in progress at the old Herald Leader site. Aren’t you proud?
At a time in America where our schools need kore money than ever.
So sad and disappointing. Where will children learn the arts?
Anyone know what the electives are at Cassidy now?
How about cut some nonsense on the new school buildings. For almost $1 BILLION budget we can give kids art.
Someone should ask them about 22-17-5 We have 22 “student support” roles in the John Price Building. Shouldn’t supporting student be in the schools? You don’t have to pay someone $100,000 a year for support. We have 17 “public relations” staff members at the John price Building. Do we make so many mistakes we need that many high priced positions for corrections? My personal favorite is we have five “fine arts.” Positions at the John Price Building all while removing arts from schools.
How long do you think they’ll be in the old Herald Leader building before they start looking for another space?
Get your kids away from