District will have to cut Spanish, band, some music
School districts across the nation are feeling the financial pains caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and the resulting shelter-in-place order, and West Side Union School District’s West Side School on Felta Road, is feeling the effects as well.
The school had to cancel its biggest fundraiser of the year in March and consequently, Spanish, band and music enrichment programs will be cut next year in order for the small district to remain financially solvent.
K-6 students will still get art and garden programs as well as supplemental music from the school’s multi credential teachers.
“We had to approach Kris (Kris Menlove, the district superintendent and school principal) and the board because we fund those enrichment programs. Those are not funded by the state … and so we had to take a look at our budget for the remainder of the school year and what we had going forward,” said Lindsay Woolman of the Felta Education Foundation.
Woolman said they recognize fundraising efforts are going to be stifled because of the economy taking a hit, and given the information, the board had to decide which programs to cut.
The Felta Fiesta, named after the one-room Old Felta Schoolhouse maintained by the district, typically raises $50,000 in funds used for enrichment programs, school events like Dia de los Niños, and field trip scholarships.
The funds also make up the Felta Foundation’s yearly fundraising goal of $85,000.
“The fiesta is typically held in the spring towards the end of March/ beginning of April, and this year it was set for the 28th of March and unfortunately we had to cancel. Slowly we saw things happening where we couldn’t have gatherings of 200 and we just knew, we saw the writing was on the wall,” Woolman said.
She said in making the difficult move to cancel, they were keeping in mind the importance of the health and safety of community members, since the annual fiesta draws in many community members, parents and grandparents.
Moving forward, Woolman said the foundation is still trying to find unique ways to raise funds. Recently, foundation members and volunteers have been working to try to see if families would be willing to convert their fiesta or raffle tickets into donations.
“We want to raise the funds so that all students benefit from the arts and music and language and so for us, we don’t want to give up on moving forward with trying to raise the $85,000 that it takes per year to fund the programs, so we are just trying to look at some creative ways to fundraise,” Woolman said. “We are a small, but mighty group of mothers.”
She said there were some community members who, instead of asking for a ticket refund for the felta fiesta, donated that money to the foundation.
“They converted their purchase into a donation, so we were able to raise a little bit of funds from that. We’ve also asked families if anyone who had a raffle ticket might be willing and able to instead make a donation,” she said.
The total amount raised prior to the shelter in place was approximately $30,000 according to Woodman.
Woolman said they also have a direct donation program and have been able to raise some funds through that and other efforts.
“We were fortunate to have been able to hold our second annual Golf Tournament in September as well as a few other smaller fundraising efforts (wrapping paper sale, art sale, etc.). We were also able to secure a handful of generous donations from the community as well as through our ‘Direct Giving Campaign’ (families are able to contribute monies via monthly payment or in a lump sum to ‘cover’ the cost of enrichment for their child, roughly $450 per student),” Woodman said. “We (Felta Education Foundation) also hustled to put together a ‘Wines for West Side Sale’ just prior to school ending for summer. We had received numerous wine donations for the Fiesta that we had planned to pour and/ or auction. We were concerned that if not properly stored these wines would go to waste so we rallied and put together a sale. Our efforts brought in about $6,000, just an example of our drive to keep the effort going despite the circumstances.”
“Every little bit helps,” she said.
Woolman noted that they do want to be sensitive to the fact that not everyone may be able to make a donation at this time and many community business partners that have contributed in the past, also may not be able to pitch in.
“We know these are tough times for many in our community, and it is hard to ask for money now,” Felta Education Foundation Vice President Sarah Walsh said in a letter to the community. “But we hope the community can come together to help us continue to provide these
important educational opportunities. We know enrichment programs enrich children’s lives, and that’s good for our community”.
Even though there won’t be as many enrichment programs as usual at West Side next year, Woolman said they are fortunate they can still offer the art and garden programs.
The garden program is run by a parent of a former West Side student and local artist, Jessica Martin, is the art program director. Art and garden are both project based enrichment programs, they work in tandem with teacher’s lesson plans so the projects can compliment the lesson or unit of the day.
For instance if a teacher is working on a native american history unit then in garden, students can learn about native plants or native american art history.
“Those programs have the biggest impact on the kids because all of the teachers do that several times a week,” Woolman said. “We are still so fortunate to be able to keep at least that.”
Menlove said of the situation, “Sadly, COVID-19 has drastically impacted education, whether it’s being on campus or whether it’s how learning is being offered and financially it’s hit every realm of society and education is not exempt from that.”
While students may not get band or their regular music program, she did say that students will still get some form of music activity.
“The recommendation for next year was to offer garden and to offer art to our students. That doesn’t mean we wouldn’t have for instance, have music because we can still make sure that our students are receiving that through our multi credential teachers,” Menlove said.
She said the goal is to look at how much fundraising can be done during the pandemic and if they can increase funding, then the district can reevaluate the situation to see if they can return to offering music full time.
“That is our goal, to look at how much fundraising can be done with the pandemic going on. The foundation has been working so hard,” Menlove said.
According to Woodman, in order to bring back Spanish, band and choral music, they’d need roughly an additional $50-55,000.
