Teachers speak out about proposed staff cuts

Several Fairfield Community School District teachers urged school board members Monday night to reconsider proposed faculty cuts from the music and athletic departments.

Mick Flattery, life skills instructor at Fairfield Middle School and head coach for both the Fairfield High School girls? basketball and FHS boys? golf team, told board members that he didn?t envy them when it came to making staff cuts, but that he hoped the board could come up with a creative way to avoid cutting FHS physical education teacher and girls? basketball coach Taylor Buch.

Flattery said both a male and a female P.E. teacher are needed at the high school, due to possible liability issues, and due to the fact that male coaches cannot enter the female locker room.

Additionally, Flattery said the presence of a female coach is necessary to assist female students with issues such as menstruation, low self-esteem and girl-to-girl relationships.

?We need a male and a female in these positions from a liability standpoint. Problems occur because there are kids with only one teacher, and we cannot wait to call the office to get a female there,? he said.

Flattery said Buch had also been a positive asset to the school, the sports program and to young female students.

Buch later said that she has built a rapport with female students, and she gave examples of how she has worked with certain students to help them become leaders and role models.

?We need more female role models and coaches who can relate to women,? Buch said. ?I?ve had to go into the locker room and break up a fight?without me there, a female would have had to be called.?

Elementary music instructor Connie Keller voiced her concerns about the proposed reduction of hours for another elementary music teacher, Madeline Thomas.

?Reducing one K-12 music teacher will affect the other departments, not just the elementary schools where this teacher works,? Keller said. ?This is due to the other elementary music teacher, who also teaches at FHS, probably being assigned to the reduced teacher?s schools.?

Thomas, who travels to all of the elementary schools in the district, said by eliminating her position, it forces the other music teachers to have to do her job.

Thomas said she travels around 230 miles between the school, and other music teachers would be affected.

?Get your information to the state level. Get your stories to the governor. Write those letters to the governor and your legislators. That helps get the money in our district,? Noll said. ?There?s a formula that seems to be broken.?