Re: district budget cuts

["John and Laurie Danahy" <JDANAHY@turbonet.com>]

Siiiggghhhh!!!  Why me????
Okay, there has not been a decision to cut the strings program yet.  Only
the board can do that by adopting a budget that does not contain funding for
strings.  I do not know where this came from, but I sincerely hope it was
not a school district employee.
now about the strings program
Three years ago a group of parents approached the board about reinstituting
a strings program at MHS.  The board asked how many students would be
involved, and no one knew.  The board, in an effort to help reinstate the
strings program, because we felt it was a GOOD THING TO DO, allowed the
group of parents to set up an after school strings program, using school
facilities and buses.  The intent was to generate enough interest to create
a JH class for strings, similar to band.  the next year, again trying to
help, the board contributed $7,000 to help fund the program, and did so
again last year.  the program was always privately run, hired its own
teacher, collected fees from students, was very good, and was primarily
elementary in nature.  To this day, noone ever said there was enough
interest to fund a class at the JH.  Funding for such a class would be
@$35,000 - not the $7,000 (does anyone really believe you can run a full HS
strings program on $7,000/year?) we have contributed in the past.  So the
decision by the admin council to recommend to the board not to fund strings,
was a decision not to fund a privately run, after school, elementary string
program, not cut a strings class.  I support the idea of the strings
program, I would support a class if funding and student numbers were
available.
John
John and Laurie Danahy
jdanahy@turbonet.com
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