Budget Cuts Eliminate Nearly All MMS After-School Programs

Budget cuts to the middle school fund that pays stipends to teachers means a number of after-school programs won't be returning in the fall.

"Unfortunately they're all true, " said Millburn Middle School Principal Michael Cahill said Thursday about the rumors running about town about the after school programs that have been cut, including jazz band. The rumors started after jazz band auditions, scheduled for Thursday, were canceled.

Also being cut are the student newspaper, the literary magazine, the Math Counts Club, the Math Enrichment Club, an A/V coordinator position, the position for the person who coordinates the stage sets for the spring musical and the book store adviser. The Peer Leadership Program, which will remain, also will suffer cuts, losing an adviser and a coordinator.

Cahill said school officials learned last week they needed to cut $20,000 from the account, which is used to pay the stipends for teachers to oversee the after-school programs. He decided to use what was left to cover the three programs that serve the most students—the student yearbook, the spring musical and the peer leadership program.

"There was no way we could keep them without cutting the other things," he said. "It's with a great deal of sadness, but we have to cut back significantly... It's a tight, painful budget."

For the peer leadership program—in which 90 percent of eighth graders participate—they will need to eliminate one group and split the students between the other groups, he said. The program allows students to participate in community service and raise money for other groups. Cahill said he doesn't know what group will be eliminated, but a worthy organization will lose out.

Cahill said he does not believe money will be available to move between accounts to make up some of the money. But even if some money became available, it would be difficult to pick which program could return.

School officials have approached the PTO about fund-raising to help pay for the programs starting in the fall, he said. But the current PTO board cannot speak for the group that will take over in the fall, he said, but the parents are willing to listen. "They do so much for us," he said. "They are very much our partners."

The stipends for the programs are not paid to teachers until the end of the school year, Cahill said, so there would be time next school year for the organization to raise money if it chooses to do so.