OKLAHOMA CITY -- Schools in Oklahoma have been making difficult decisions for years because of a lack of funding.
Headlton Elementary has been cut down to four day school weeks for at least the past five years. They typically lose a day around March, but this year it was February.
Kelli Kana, a fifth grade teacher at the school, said she has been told the district cannot afford to keep the schools open for a full week for the rest of the year.
That is just one of the cuts made at the schools.
"My high school... they don’t have foreign language," Donielle Cantwell, principal at Headlton Elementary, said. "Spanish is out. We don’t have art. Music is band. That’s it. We don’t have any extra music. We don’t have electives."
Cantwell said they are down ten teachers in the district this year alone. She and the other principals have had to step in and pick up the slack.
"I actually teach an academic achievement class in the middle school," Cantwell said. "Last year, I taught an eighth grade computer class. The year before that, I was a half day kindergarten teacher. Before that, I was back in the middle school teaching some science to middle schoolers."
Kana said it is harder to teach her students just four days a week instead of five. Plus, the lack of resources does not help.
"It’s just so many more standards the state placed on us last year and they’re tougher and like I said we don’t have the material to teach them."
Cantwell said her teachers are having to find their curriculum on the Internet.
As principal, she is also having to make the decision between buying math books for her students and keeping a teacher's aid on staff.
"Last year, the whole district gave up their Christmas stipend that they’ve gotten for years," Cantwell said. "They gave it up because we knew there were going to be cuts from the state department and we wanted to keep a teacher. We didn’t want to have to come down to the end of the year and get rid of a teacher."
Kana said something has to change and now is the time to change it. She said teachers have sent an obvious message for the last five days that they are not going anywhere until they see funding.
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