The Bakersfield City School District is facing a $5.5 million shortfall next year. The budget shortfall will mean different things to different schools, depending on how school site councils, made up of students, teachers and parents, decide to juggle their finances.
For Sierra Middle School it means one more position on campus that students will have to go without. After the last bell rang at Sierra Middle School Friday, students, teachers and parents gathered into a small classroom. Through frustration and tears, they came to make tough decisions about where they would make those cuts.
Next school year, Sierra will have to make due with about $70 thousand less than this year. That means fewer support staff. "Our staff members frequently serve as parental figures and role models to students who sometimes have no one else capable of providing that at home, this is where support staff step in," said Allison Arnold, a science teacher.
Originally they thought it may be necessary to cut both their vice principal and librarian. And on a campus where students already go without so many things, including a counselor, teachers say the thought of losing more positions is devastating. "It just seems like more and more our students are suffering daily," said Rosi Duenas, a math teacher at Sierra. "Reading teachers are cheaper than prison guards. Improving students job skills, life skills as well as the basics, prepares them for the world they will soon encounter," said Arnold.
In the end the council voted to shift funding to keep their vice principal on campus, meaning next year there won't be a librarian. "There's studies that show that students are more than twice as likely to do better on their testing if there is a certified teacher librarian on campus," said current librarian Cynthia Rendel.
The school plans to keep the library open even without a librarian.
