EDITORIAL: Make do with less
Is the glass half full or half empty? When it comes to something as arbitrary as a simple pint of water, it is easy to make a quick decision. Half full or half empty. End of story. Throw more complex aspects into the equation, however, and the choice becomes much less simple.
In the 2011 to 2012 school year, many Peninsula programs asked students to pay donations in order to be allowed to participate. But this year, fearing the possibility of a lawsuit from the American Civil Liberties Union over the legality of so-called “mandatory participation fees,” the District stepped down its pleas for payments, “maybe a little too much,” attested Principal Cress.
“Ideally, the District would raise $500,000 and the school programs would raise another $500,000 to cover the approximately million-dollar annual costs of sports and extracurricular activities,” Cress stated. Unfortunately, this year, Pen High raised $200,000 less in participation donations than it did last year, which was the source of the cuts in extracurricular programs.
The question inevitably arises, “who’s to blame?” When the District implemented the participation donations, the goal was to have 70% of all participants turn in their donations, but this year, just over 50% of almost 2700 total students chose to contribute money.
While it is all too easy to claim “I’ve paid my fees, so the fault must lie with students who have not,” we must still remain conscious of the fact that we do live in difficult financial times. The PVPUSD district budget for this year was already slashed by $2.5 million as a result of state financial difficulties, and this loss of money in turn translated to cuts of staff positions. Further, 3% of our students come from socioeconomically disadvantaged families, and while they cannot pay the donations, they should not (and cannot) be barred from participating.
So what can we do about it? As students, we don’t possess much economic leverage, if any at all. But we do have tools available for us to utilize. The ASB allows us to sponsor clubs that target specific interest groups, and even if some extracurricular activities no longer exist as courses for credit, meetings can still be hosted after school or even outside of school at your local Starbucks, albeit in a less formal manner. Furthermore, some teachers are still willing to promote these programs despite the recently imposed cuts.
Aptly, then, this is not an editorial asking students to fork over their weekly allowances in order to fund their programs. Rather, it is a salient reminder that, although money is certainly one aspect involved in the budget crisis, there is also the issue of how we will adapt.
In the end, it is not the amount of monetary input, but the composition of the participants, that will ultimately determine the success of a program. As long as we have teachers who are willing to support us and students who are interested in working together, these programs will never truly die. It is up to us to keep them alive and running. So now consider – is the glass half full or half empty?
