Superintendent Bobbie Gutierrez, President Barbara Gudwin, VP Glenn Wikle
The Santa Fe Public Schools Board of Education voted unanimously last night to take over funding physical education teachers for four Santa Fe public elementary schools heretofore reliant on parent fundraising.---
Acequia Madre, Atalaya, Wood Gormley and Carlos Gilbert Elementary schools will get district funding to pay PE teachers' salaries at a total cost of about $180,000 to the district. Parent teacher associations at each of those schools had in the past devoted most of their fundraising efforts (car washes, carnivals, Spanish and Indian Market parking, door to door chocolate sales, and other initiatives) to paying PE teacher salaries because the state didn't allocate money to the district to pay for them.
The state Public Education Department requires elementary school children receive PE, and created a statute in 2007 that would gradually bring state funding to all of them. After the economic downturn hit, the state discontinued that plan, leaving eight Santa Fe schools without funding, or hope of getting it. During last spring's budget negotiations, the SFPS BoE voted to provide the funding for four of those schools, which had no PE because parent teacher associations didn't raise it. The four schools mentioned above weren't brought in, partly because the parents were able to foot the bill through fundraising.
Now they won't have to. Parent John Trentacosta and parent and Wood Gormley PTA president Dan Baker expressed their excitement about the BoE's decision during the public forum last night (video forthcoming).
The funding is coming out of SFPS' cash reserves, which currently total $8.4 million. Five million of that money is reserved for payroll, and SFPS assistant superintendent Mel Morgan urged the BoE last night to "be very conservative with our cash." Board member Frank Montaño voted to pay the salaries, but warned that because the cash balance isn't recurring funding, but something that is spent down each year, there may come a point when SFPS students won't have paid PE again.
"We may find ourselves backtracking on some of these positions if things get worse [with the budget]," Montaño said. "Just because you have a PE teacher now doesn't mean you have funds forever."
