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MPS Parents Protest Budget Cuts
MPS faces $32 million deficit and School Board fails to aggressively fight for more money.
Some of the hardest hit programs are districtwide initiatives designed to help students who have difficulty achieving in traditional school settings. For example, Lady Pitts, a high school for teenage mothers, will likely have to close. Another highly acclaimed program for special education students, the School-to-Work Transition Program, will likely be another casualty of the budget cuts.
“Our program will be gone,” said Barbara Foulks of the School-to-Work Transition Program, which transitions special education students into adult jobs. “The kids we serve will be hurt.”
“What bothers me,” she continued, “is that when they eliminate my job, they [the school board and district] are not making any plans to deal with the needs of the kids I serve. If they were serious about reform, they would have something else in place for these kids.”
Paraprofessional, music, art, and gym positions have also been hard hit. At Allen-Field Elementary School, for example, the school will be forced to cut seven paraprofessional educational assistants who serve the bilingual program.
A number of local school councils sent in letters with their schools’ budgets, calling upon the School Board to help find more money and warning how the budget cuts are affecting educational quality.</p
