Students attending schools in the Santa Maria-Bonita School District will have to wait one more year to attend some of the district’s annual events, including the Multicultural Fair, Track Meet, and Geography Bee. The announcement came from district officials earlier this month.
District spokeswoman Maggie White said the decision was based on “a combination of a lot of different things.”
Held annually at the Souza Center to immerse students in cultures from the around the world, the Multicultural Fair was canceled because of delays in the state budget and a shortened timeline. Teachers usually plan the fair over the winter holiday, but were unable to do so this year because of hiring and spending freezes.
“An awful lot of time out of the classroom goes into putting something like that together,” White said, adding that the freezes prevented adequate funding for teacher stipends and busing to the district office.
The freezes similarly cut funding for busing to the annual track meet, held at Santa Maria High School, and put a stop to after-school training for the district’s track teams.
The Geography Bee, however, was postponed for more constructive reasons.
“The teachers want to take time off to update the format of the bee and make it more technology-based,” White said.
If everything goes according to plan, she added, all of the events should be up and running by next year.
“This isn’t the first time we’ve had to cancel events,” she said. “When budget times get tight, those are the kinds of things—the extras that go above and beyond—you have to look at cutting.”
White said that while everyone is disappointed about the postponements, teachers, staff members, and even children seem to have taken it all in stride.
“When you’re laying off teachers and freezing budgets to save jobs, people usually understand things like this are going to happen,” she said.
This article appears in Mar 26 – Apr 2, 2009.