“Those are not feasible,” she said, trying to envision students cleaning paint bushes and other supplies with a sporadic water source that has to be both filled and emptied multiple times a day.
“And the wastewater container is 50-60 pounds and that would have to be emptied throughout the day,” she said. “Who does it?”
Her emails to district officials and board members have not been returned, she said.
Thomas feels that classes like hers were not adequately considered when the campus merger was voted on and, more precisely, when DeSoto Hall was chosen as the new home for middle schoolers.
“If I didn’t say anything, I would have just been given a room with no sink,” she said. “They didn’t even put two and two together that there are no sinks in the building.”
Another staffer whose classroom curriculum requires running water credited board President Roxanne McNally, who met with a number of SRMS teachers recently, with at least listening to their concerns. The staffer asked not to be named for fear of retribution.
“She didn’t promise anything,” the staffer said. “But we had someone say to our face, ‘This is a problem,’ and wasn’t trying to brush it off.”
Solving the problem is critical for middle schoolers next year.
“Seventh and eighth grade is when students start pulling away from organized education,” Howell said. “These enrichment programs are the ones that can capture them to say that learning can be exciting, fun and it can prepare you for the rest of your life.”
School board, district response
During the April 23 board meeting, Trustee Jeremy De La Torre pushed district leaders for more transparent and clear communication on how programs will change with the transition.
Talking specifically of culinary and the conflicting information about whether it will remain intact, Alisa Haley, the district’s executive director of elementary education, said that the mistake will not happen again.
“My big thing is I’m not going to make a false promise,” Haley said. “It’s important that it doesn’t happen because it’s not fair to the Slater team.”
Trustee Mark Kirby asked the same group of district leaders about how they would solve the problem for arts and science teachers in the DeSoto building at Santa Rosa High School.
LuzElena Perez, executive director of secondary education, said the district is looking into “far more upgraded version” of the portable sinks per a teacher’s request that “wouldn’t be perfect, but are better” than the portables.
Permanently upgrading campus buildings is a long process because of state requirements through the Division of State Architectures, which can add at least nine months to any campus construction project, August said.
“Yes, we’re trying to address the immediate needs,” August said. “But we are also planning in the long term to make the adjustments.”
Trustees did not mention the mandate from Feb. 21, when they specifically highlighted two programs — Slater’s culinary and wood shop programs — in their final discussion on school closures.
In that mandate, the board asked the district to find a way for Montgomery High School to “incorporate” both facilities in year one of the closure plan.
“What I don’t understand is how the board can mandate something and the district can cherry pick what they do and do want to follow through with,” Lilligren said.
In a joint interview on April 24, Board President Roxanne McNally and August noted that the mandate was a small part of larger conversation on how the transition would generally look, and “with the expectations that (it would be) as facilities allow,” August said.
“If it was stated in a way that (the culinary mandate) was a promise, then I think we owe an apology for that,” McNally said. “We can’t deliver exactly what we promised but we are working as hard as we can to give the best version of things possible.”
August and McNally noted that compromises and sacrifices are necessary in the short term to support the long-term vision.
“A big part of it is that we’re balancing the long term with the short term which is always a really hard thing to do especially as a teacher,” McNally said. “As an educator, you see the kid that’s right in front of you, you want what’s best for every student and it’s really hard to make sacrifices for the kids now to benefit the kids later.”
Howell, representing about 900 district educators, feels that the burden of the transition is placed on the teachers, who continue to make compromises with one another to make the new academic model work.
Lilligren, like other middle school teachers, does not fault her high school counterparts or even the administrators that run their future schools. Rather, it’s about the district overpromising and under-delivering.
“We have a gap between theory and practice,” Lilligren said. “The district takes things that might theoretically work and they might try to put it into practice without the expertise and resources to do so. The loss of this program is a perfect example of that.”
Report For America corps member Adriana Gutierrez covers education and child welfare issues for The Press Democrat. You can reach her at Adriana.Gutierrez@pressdemocrat.com.
Staff Writer Kerry Benefield contributed to this article.
