Parents, students fight for Moon Area child development course

A Moon Area School District proposal to eliminate a child development class led to bickering and finger-pointing at a school board meeting Monday.

An angry group of parents and high school students filled the board room to voice objections to a proposal, presented Feb. 9, to cut child development from the high school program of studies, though the board voted at that meeting to retain the class for the 2015-16 school year until staff could provide more information.

Some were upset because they were not allowed to speak at Monday's meeting, because public comment about non-agenda items is reserved for the meeting on the second Monday of each month.

“Let's show them how the democratic process is supposed to work,” parent James Bogatay called from the audience.

Cutting the child development class would save salary and benefit costs for one staff member, which could be applied where there is a need for more staff, such as in the guidance department, district spokeswoman Tina Vojtko said.

During the contentious meeting Monday, school board President A. Michael Olszewski accused board member Jerry Testa of fueling tensions by calling for a motion, which failed, to keep the child development class.

The class teaches parenting skills and child development from conception through school age. It includes a preschool, which 15 children attend in 2½-hour morning or afternoon sessions in the fall and the spring, Vojtko said.

The preschool tuition is $100 per semester, which covers daily snacks, materials and typically one field trip. About 90 high school students are enrolled in the child development class, Vojtko said.

At the Feb. 9 meeting, school district staff presented a plan that would remove four high school classes or programs, including a reading and writing lab and the child development class, and add five classes, including an Advanced Placement language class for 11th graders. The board approved all changes except for the child development class, which it voted to maintain for the time being.

Board member Michael Hauser said he was blindsided by the proposal to cut the child development class and that the administration should have presented follow-up information Monday.

The administration needs to gather facts about how well the course functions, its impact on students, the cost of maintaining it and the potentially negative impacts of cutting it, he said.

The school board has not set a time frame for more information to be presented, district Superintendent Curt Baker said.

It's possible that the issue won't be raised again and that the class will remain a permanent part of the high school program of studies, he said.

“On this particular course that we're talking about … I don't know that anyone has said that it's not a good course or a course that's not valuable,” he said.

Also Monday, Baker announced that San Ramon, Calif.-based Chevron Corp. awarded a $40,000 grant to the school district to fund Project Lead the Way, a science, technology, engineering and math, or STEM, curriculum.

Moon Area will split the grant evenly between Allard and McCormick elementary schools to fund materials and training to teach the lessons, Baker said.

“It's a continuation of our focus on strengthening and expanding our STEM curriculum. It represents a good step forward in what we said we want to do in expanding our success with competitive grants,” Baker said Tuesday.

Tory N. Parrish is a staff writer for Trib Total Media. She can be reached at 412-380-5662or tparrish@tribweb.com.