WALES – The Wales Central School board voted this week to eliminate music, art, physical education and after-school sports to help meet a $202,000 cut in its proposed budget for 2006-07.
Other cuts included elimination of bus service for students attending Oak Hill High School and to end gifted and talented, health and Spanish programs.
The school newspaper, yearbook and drama club were also eliminated. Other cuts will made across the board, ranging from repairs and maintenance to library books.
The cuts included three teaching positions: a half-time music teacher, a physical education and health teacher and a position that includes art, foreign language and gifted and talented programs.
“These are programs we can hold school without, though we don’t want to,” Superintendent Susan Hodgdon said Thursday.
She said Wednesday night she had anticipated cuts, “but not this drastic; our school is in severe jeopardy.”
The eliminated programs are part of Maine Learning Results and are supposed to be included in all curriculums, but the state can give one-year waivers to schools with budget problems, Hodgdon said.
Wales Central School will seek a waiver from the state education commissioner, she said.
Voters at town meeting Saturday reduced the school’s request for additional spending – above the amount needed to qualify for state funding – from $470,000 to $268,000.
Prior to that vote, taxpayers agreed to appropriate and raise $339,333 locally in order to receive $1.6 million from the state’s Essential Programs and Services Funding Act.
The request for $470,691 in additional local funds exceeded the state’s recommendation by $335,351.
Wales Central School has about 190 students in kindergarten through grade eight. High schoolers attend Oak Hill with students from Sabattus and Litchfield.
The Wales district is not obligated by law to transport students to Oak Hill High School, school board member Russell Swift said. “I am more concerned with what is being done here in Wales and not what happens between here and the high school.”
About 45 Wales students ride buses to Oak Hill, at a cost of $25,000 a year to the local school district.
Parents at Wednesday’s meeting were outraged and angered by the cuts.
“The people of this town didn’t know what they were voting on,” said Nicola Adams. “The budget wasn’t properly broken down.”
Adams said her family moved to Wales from Portland in November after doing research on school communities. “We found that Wales had great school reviews.”
She now feels as if her children will be left behind.
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