All Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District elementary school aides’ jobs insecure

Sam ReamerStaff WriterDue to the new general fund funding method, many, if not all, elementary school aides’ working in the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District (SMMUSD) jobs are in jeopardy.According to Franklin Elementary School aide Debra Gerhardt, elementary school aides at her school have had relative job security because they have been paid for by their school’s Parent Teacher Association (PTA). However, now that the district is moving towards a centralized fund for donations where all donations from all schools in the district will be pooled, some people are worried that the number and amount of donations will decrease and there will not be sufficient funds to pay aide salaries.“Some of the other aides are very tense about the situation,” Gerhardt said.  “I believe that with the way everything is being negotiated currently that they’re not going to let go of any aides this coming school year. It’s the following years that we have no idea what’s going to happen. In the past we’ve been worried about budget cuts, and generally it’s the teachers that have been pink slipped, but our jobs have not been targeted [until now].”Gerhardt also said that when surveyed by the school, teachers at Franklin ranked the aides program as one of the most important.“I know that the teachers were asked to vote for what they most want to keep if the budget really got sliced,” Gerhardt said. “The teachers desperately wanted to keep their assistants because it really helps keep the classroom functioning well.”Third grade teacher Nikki Fiske said that students would suffer if the aides program was disbanded, because that would mean one less person in classes that continue to increase in size.“I use my aide for everything. She re-teaches with my kids for whatever subject I ask,” Fiske said. “She marks papers for me and she prepares things for me. Anything that I need she will do. We’ve worked together for years. I’m teaching twenty-six kids so when I need her to help a student with a second chance test she can help them one on one while I teach the other twenty-five students. It’s incredibly, incredibly short sighted to think of getting rid of the aides. They don’t just cut paper, they do so much more.”Samo Freshman Garrison Finley understands the importance of aides in elementary schools and how they help with student development but also understands that schools lack funding.“I remember the aides being almost like teachers,” Garrison said. “They were kind of [like] assistants. They were cool and interesting.They were someone you could relate to instead of just the teachers who were authoritative figures.”Gerhardt also felt that parents will be more inclined to help once they realize how much at risk the aides program is.“I think that parents just take it as it is presented to them,” Gerhardt said. “It’s not a really pressing problem for them for this coming school year. I don’t know that they’ve invested that much time and interest into it. I think that when it comes down to it actually occurring, and their students lose the assistants, and therefore a lot less can be accomplished with their own children, then they might actually step up to the plate.”According to PTA member Elizabeth Stearns, the aides might still be cut even with parent fundraising.“Something’s going to happen because there is a deficit. We are getting a lot of cuts so we’ve got to do something,” Stearns said. “What we will try to do is locally fundraise to raise money so we don’t have to do as many cuts. We fundraise through PTA’s and the Ed Foundation, but these cuts are too big and are happening too soon for us to think that we can raise the money.”sreamer@thesamohi.com