War against public education

2011-01-27 "San Jose adult education classes to disappear" by Sharon Noguchi from "San Jose Mercury News" newspaper
[http://www.mercurynews.com/education/ci_17220350?nclick_check=1]
Ending a 44-year history, the budget-squeezed Metropolitan Education District will likely stop offering all recreational and leisure classes for adults at the end of this school year, and will cut by more than half its basic education courses for adults.
Classes ranging from Spanish to watercolor to "coping with hearing loss" will be gone after June, and 100 of 368 teachers and other employees will lose their jobs. Two of three campuses will close. The fate of a teaching garden at Erikson School is up in the air.
And that's the good scenario. If California voters do not extend temporary tax measures, as Gov. Jerry Brown is recommending, the district's financial squeeze could become a death grip. MetroED would probably close its entire adult-education program.
Superintendent Paul Hay is occupied with preparing to dismantle and move programs, close campuses and lay off employees. In between, he feels devastated.
"But our focus right now is how do we do what we have to do to serve the most number of students next year," he said.
Students are feeling at a loss. "To end this class for everyone would be a travesty," said Rebecca Moreci, one of 23 students in an intermediate Spanish class in the "50-Plus" program for older adults. Classmate Nathan Mitakides, 80, called the class "mental as well as social nourishment."
Students cited a long list of reasons to study Spanish at MetroED. "I look forward to jueves con Paco," or Thursdays with teacher Frank Herrera, Moreci said.
But the budget outlook is dark and darker. MetroED is funded in part by the state and by its six member school districts. The largest of those, San Jose Unified, last week decided to cut its contributions to the adult-education district by two-thirds, or $3.5 million.
Like all other districts, San Jose Unified faces its own revenue crisis. Given flexibility by the state, the district is scooping up monies from separate pots -- once designated for not only adult education, but also gifted and talented programs, arts and textbooks, for instance -- to shore up basic education..
"We are a K-12 district," San Jose Unified Superintendent Vincent Matthews said, after the school board voted 5-0 last week to redirect its adult education funds. "We're in a place we'd rather not be in, if the Legislature made the tough decisions they ought to make."
So the $3.5 million next school year will go toward restoring five days to the academic year, days that were lost this year in the form of employee furloughs. Matthews also plans to bolster Saturday school, summer school and remedial classes, and open a middle school for struggling students.
All that comes as little solace to adults who will lose their classes.
MetroED will close the Erikson Adult Education Center on Pearl Avenue and San Jose Adult Education Center on East Julian Street. From July 1, remaining classes will be consolidated at the Hillsdale Avenue campus. The district will eliminate the 50-Plus and "Community Interest" programs, along with Capitol High School for students making up credits.
The 2,400-student Central County Occupational Program, a career development and training facility, is not being trimmed. And MetroED's other adult programs will survive, but at less than half their current size. That includes basic reading and math skills and courses leading to a high school diploma or its equivalent, vocational education, English as a Second Language and citizenship classes.
And the fate of the World Garden at Erickson is uncertain. It's the site of free monthly garden workshops, a gardening class for older adults and classes for home-schooled children. Its harvest of fruit and vegetables is donated to the Second Harvest Food Bank -- when there's not a pest quarantine in place.
Maintaining the garden was a condition when MetroED took over the Erikson campus seven years ago amid neighborhood opposition.
"My concern is that the garden continue and be maintained organically and with care," said master gardener Rita Bottini. 49.
Students questioned whether the leisure classes could be continued at a higher cost. Currently, for example, the fee for older adult classes is $30 per semester -- up from $5 a few years ago.
But Hay said the district can't afford to continue even its other fee-funded "Community Interest" classes, which cost $6 per hour, or typically $72 for a six-week course. The fees pay for the instructor but not the overhead. And with consolidation, the district is losing its sites for the classes.
The cutback is the most severe in MetroED history. It is a sad decline for what was one of the largest adult education programs in the state, once serving 115,000 people annually. Even just a few years ago, it could meet demand and offer, for example, 11 sections of "Better Bones and Balance," registrar Maria Consuelo Cisneros said. Now classes have waiting lists -- or simply don't exist.
There's no indication that other agencies will pick up the course offerings. MetroED's classes at several community locations, such as churches, will continue next year, Hay said.
But students and teachers alike at the two campuses slated to close worry about losing their course and their community.
"I've developed a relationship here," Bottini said. "I feel like one of the trees in the garden."

METROPOLITAN EDUCATION DISTRICT
Number of students served annually: 7,300; after cuts, about 2,100 to 2,300 students will be served
Created: 1967, an outgrowth of the City of San Jose's "night school" dating to the 1870s
2010-11 budget: $8 million
2011-12 budget projection: $3.7 million
Member school districts: Los Gatos-Saratoga Joint Union High, Campbell Union High, East Side Union High, San Jose Unified, Milpitas Unified, Santa Clara Unified.