Midyear budget cuts for OSD

While the cuts will not affect any classrooms in the district, the effects will be felt in just about every other area. The cuts range from freezing non-essential purchases to cutting some of the district’s 225 extracurricular clubs.
“Many of the cuts that we’re doing are postponing of purchases,” said Louis Frontario, assistant superintendent of business. “Things that may have been budgeted this year.” The district is planning to look at every purchase order much more closely, and before an order is filled, the person who placed it must justify, according to Frontario, “beyond a reasonable doubt that they have to have [it] in order to get through the school year.”
With the cuts and freezes, the district hopes to save about $300,000 by the end of the current school year. “That $300,000 in our fund balance will help us carry forward into the next year and manage the bigger cuts that are coming,” Frontario said.
At the Dec. 15 school board meeting, Superintendent Dr. Herb Brown laid out other cost-saving measures. Brown's plan includes postponing cosmetic building and grounds renovations, reducing the level of supervision at after-school sporting events, eliminating overtime pay for custodians and secretaries, and canceling any new overnight trips for faculty and staff, among other things.
None of the cuts will affect classrooms — no teachers are being cut. However, disbanding some of the district’s 225 clubs will affect students directly.
The principals of each school were tasked with deciding which clubs to cut. In some cases, like the many Mathlete clubs in the elementary schools, the principals combined them. In School 3, for example, separate Mathletes club for grades four and five will be combined into one club.
But at Oceanside High School, the students weren't as lucky. Seven clubs, including the psychology and Frisbee clubs, were cut, affecting at least 41 students — the highest number in the district.
"We get the most good stuff," said Oceanside High School Principal Mark Secaur, "and sometimes we get it taken away due to our size.
"The reality is that we often cut clubs due to low enrollment," Secaur added. "We certainly try to nurture clubs so that they’re well-attended and play an active role within the school, but sometimes the clubs that are proposed don’t really pan out."
"It was a great club," said John Stenz, a 16-year-old junior at OHS and a member of the Frisbee club — which has four members on the school’s roster — though Stenz said usually 10 or more students gather to play. "It was a place where people who enjoyed playing Frisbee could go and, I guess, enjoy playing Frisbee. And for other people, it was a good time for them to get in shape for other sports."
Among the clubs that will disband at the end of January are the Spanish Club, which has six members, the Italian Club, with four members, and the Psychology Club, the largest club to be cut, with 11 members. The eight-member Science Club was spared for the remainder of the year — members are working on experiments in which they have already invested a lot of time and work — but will not reorganize next year.
While some clubs will be gone, students “have been told about a great many other opportunities for them to become active in other clubs," Secaur said. And the absence of a club doesn't mean that students can't still gather and enjoy an activity. "Just because [they] cut the club doesn’t
mean you can’t still do what you enjoy to do,"
Stenz said.
The district hopes to save about $40,000 in fees paid to teachers for supervising disbanded clubs.
"In my estimation, the pain that was promised is going to be delivered," Frontario said of the governor's proposed cuts. "A $2 million reduction in state aid hurts, just like it would hurt any district. We’re going to turn over every rock. We probably already have, actually."
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