COAL TOWNSHIP - Despite all the turmoil and change brought about by Shamokin Area School District's budget crisis, when the new school year begins Aug. 27, elementary students will have art classes, they will have music classes and they will have physical education.
Those same lessons will be offered in the middle school, too.
The difference from this school year to next is how these courses will be taught.
In the elementary school, homeroom teachers will take over the lessons from their furloughed colleagues.
It's more complicated in the middle school, where teachers must incorporate elements of music, art and physical education into core lessons in English, mathematics, science and social studies.
The change came about earlier this month when the school board voted to lay off 19 teachers, a controversial decision but one the board said was necessary to further reduce a budget deficit that topped $5.6 million last fall.
The new process
Elementary students will still have classes in the art room, in the music room and in the gymnasium, Principal Mary Theresa Komara said Wednesday.
Those lessons will no longer be taught by specialized teachers, however, but by elementary homeroom teachers, all of whom are trained and certified in those subject areas.
"They're going to have an
enrichment schedule and they're going to have phys ed, and the classroom teacher is going to the gym. They're going to go to the library and exchange books," Komara said. "They're going to go to the art room."
Some teachers who have more expertise in music may teach those lessons to more homerooms than their own, perhaps switching off with teachers who have stronger backgrounds in art or phys ed, she said.
The state has academic standards for enrichment classes; standards increase by grade level. It's up to an individual school district to determine a curriculum to meet those standards.
For example, students must learn vocabulary in the art forms and use those words more technically as they advance in age. They must also, by eighth grade, explain works of others within each art form through performance or exhibition, as well as classify different styles and genres.
Among the standards set for phys ed, the state requires a third-grader to identify and engage in physical activities; a sixth-grader to engage in moderate to vigorous activities. How often that activity must occur is not explained in the state standards.
They must also, over time, learn basic teamwork and etiquette, and basic game strategies and physical activities.
Not the first time
Exactly what the lesson plans will look like will be refined over the summer as Komara and Assistant Principal Karen Colangelo work with school personnel to develop a strategy.
They could look to the past for guidance.
When furloughs occurred in the district "years ago," Komara said, homeroom teachers then faced the same tasks their contemporaries face today.
Lesson plans were developed by department heads and Komara said those plans will be reviewed.
She couldn't speak to the depth of knowledge a homeroom teacher may have in any given enrichment course subject.
"You can't take credit away from them," she said of the art, music and gym teachers who will be laid off at the end of the current school year. "They specialized in that for years."
Middle school options
It's a little different in the middle school because students aren't with one teacher all day, Principal Chris Venna said Thursday.
"In our case, we can incorporate things into the curriculum in English, math, science and social studies," he said, adding that the district would encourage middle school teachers to do this as often as possible.
Lessons on music or art history can easily be incorporated into a lesson plan, Venna said, while admitting physical education will prove more challenging.
There will no longer be gym classes, meaning physical education will veer toward lessons on theory using books versus putting those lessons to test on the gym floor.
There are opportunities for alternatives.
Venna used his own experiences as a teacher to offer examples of how enrichment courses could be blended into the core curriculum.
When he taught eighth-grade mathematics, he gave lessons on tessellations - a pattern of geometric shapes where there are no overlaps, such as a honeycomb or brick wall - and used the works of famed artist M.C. Escher as examples.
For high school physics, he'd use student performance in the weight room for lessons on work, force and power.
A statistics teacher could use similar data on the number of pushups or sit-ups completed in a given time period for lessons on creating bar graphs and other data tables, and on finding the mean, median and mode of a data set, he said.
"Teachers are flexible in working for students. Over the years, our teachers have gotten better and better at that," he said.
Creative outlets in typically staid course lessons could prove beneficial for students who, for example, don't excel at mathematics but have an artistic bent.
"The benefit for (teachers) is that students will be more engaged when they're doing those types of lessons," Venna said.
"Teachers will have to be more creative in finding those things," he said.
Instrumental instruction
When the furloughs were made, the entire music department in the elementary and middle schools was wiped out. That leaves the future of individual lessons on musical instruments up in the air.
"I'm not sure how that would work. When it comes to instrumental lessons, that will be our biggest challenge," Venna said.
He said an alternative at the middle school could be establishment of an after-school club where lessons could be taught.
"It's not the same, by any means," he said, "but it's better than (having) no opportunities."
Clubs in middle and high school are commonplace. They're non-existent at the elementary.
That could change, Komara said, as a music club could be a possibility there as well.
She said there is some talk of seeking help through the school's PTA to contract with someone to provide instrument lessons. Grant funding opportunities will also be sought, she said.
"My teachers will work over and beyond the call of duty if they have to. They will do what they need to do to meet the needs of the students, and they have done that in the past," Komara said.
Venna readily admitted these changes are no replacement for the benefits that come with specialized teachers overseeing courses in art, music and phys ed.
"Nothing will be the same as having art class with an art teacher, but it can be something we can offer until the budget gets better," he said.