With public school in Bakersfield starting Monday, Aug. 24, local elementary school teachers have been busily unpacking and setting up their classrooms during the past two weeks. But the school year they’re returning to has a far different feel from years past.

Constrained budgets mean less supplemental money for classroom supplies. In districts that

have had to reduce staff, teachers are facing larger class sizes. Some teachers displaced by reductions are having to get acquainted with new schools entirely.

And teachers are mentally preparing for the situation to worsen, as they have watched the state government cut about $18 billion from education (K-12 and community colleges) so far this year. This

equates to about $130 million from districts in Kern County, or about $840 per student, according to Steve Talbot with the Kern County Superintendent of Schools.

In the face of cutbacks, local elementary teachers are putting their creative minds to work as they get ready to return to school. They are finding ways to reuse old materials, make their own new

materials and shop for back-to-school deals.

In Bakersfield City School District, teachers did not receive a $500 gift card to a local school supply store as they have the past two years. Because of that, the district has seen an increase in teachers using its curriculum lab – where they can make things such as posters and laminated items.

All teachers receive basic

classroom supplies such as pencils, erasers and crayons. But many like to add to their arsenal of learning materials.

“Our school district’s budget was cut by $26 million,” said Steve Gabbitas of BCSD. “The gift cards were something the board did the last two years to be helpful and kind. But it was one of the things that had to go.”

Generous hearts

This is Stephanie Morain’s tenth year as a second grade teacher at Bessie E. Owens Primary School in BCSD. She spent about $200 of her own money on supplies for her students this summer, and also visited the curriculum lab to add more slots to her classroom behavior chart in preparation for more students.

“I probably spent too much. But the things I buy are going to make my life easier and make the kids happier,” Morain said.

For example, the No. 2 pencils the district provides her are not as sturdy as the fat-lead pencils Morain buys for the students.

“The kids eat them up in two days. They break them, they stick them in holes and snap them in half. The fat-lead pencils don’t break,” Morain said.

She did find a good deal for the fat-lead pencils. The Dollar Store sells them for $1 per pack of 12 – a better price than at GW’s, the school supply store at which she used to shop with her gift card from the district.

Because many of her students are from low-income families in east Bakersfield, Morain buys extra supplies that the students can take home. Some of her students don’t even have pencils at home, she said. She also shops yard sales for backpacks and usually gives about 8 to ten of them to her students each year.

“They don’t have to have backpacks, but it helps them take ownership and it’s something to bring back and forth to school,” she said.

At Franklin Elementary, third grade teacher Kathy Kozlowski shops at thrift stores and yard sales to fill her classroom library. Students can take the books home to read, and if they don’t bring them back, it’s OK.

“Now is the time to try and get the kids independently reading. They know how to read, but they need to learn to love to read. So I provide lots and lots of books. A lot of kids don’t have books at home,” she said.

Adopt-a-class

Laurie Kessler, a fourth grade teacher at BCSD’s Myra A. Noble Elementary in northeast Bakersfield, is lucky to have a generous benefactor for her class. Her sister, Jena Williams, “adopted” her students after her daughter went to college and she was left an empty nester.

She reads to them on Friday afternoons, gives them chapter books to take home, and sponsors class parties. She also donates a lot of supplies to Kessler’s class, such as folders, spiral-bound notebooks, and personal pencil boxes for every student. The boxes are filled with pencils, pens, a highlighter, glue stick, sticky notes and colored pencils.

“They love their pencil boxes because it’s their personal stuff,” Kessler said. “A lot of kids don’t show up with anything. When they walk in that first day and see (their pencil boxes) they’re calmer. They don’t have the anxiety of not being ready. Having everything they need makes a difference in their attitude. They respond better because they have what they need to succeed.”

In the Panama-Buena Vista Union School District, many parents help the schools by donating classroom supplies, said Gerrie Kincaid, the assistant superintendent for educational services. One school sent letters home with students at the end of last school year encouraging parents to purchase extra supplies to donate in anticipation of budget cuts.

“Our parents have always been really helpful about donating glue sticks, crayons, and enhancements to basic school supplies,” Kincaid said.

In Rosedale Union School District, the Parent Teacher Clubs step up to help teachers get the supplies they need. According to Superintendent Jamie Henderson, the PTCs for the district’s nine schools raised a total of $800,000 last year.

That help will be especially handy this year, with the elimination of a supplementary budget the district used to give teachers to use at their discretion. The fund started at $150 per teacher, and has been dwindling over the past couple of years until now, when it has been eliminated completely, Henderson said.

BCSD also has an education foundation that raises money for the district with the help of local businesses and community members. The foundation awards grants to teachers who apply. Anyone who is interested in more information about the foundation can call Margaret Cross at 631-4893.

The Learning Center

For teachers who don’t have the budget to buy certain materials for their classroom – or need to be especially creative at adapting materials to fit their students’ needs – they may opt to make the items themselves. Some local school districts operate curriculum labs for teachers to share ideas and create their own items.

The Kern County Superintendent of Schools Office runs The Learning Center, open to all teachers in Kern County as well as to the public. Preschool teachers, day care providers, home schoolers and parents are also encouraged to use the facility. The charge is $2.50 per half hour and some of the basic materials are free to use.

On a recent afternoon, the center, located at the corner of 21^st and L streets downtown, was bustling with teachers making all kinds of creative things for their classrooms. Judy Padgett is the head lab clerk.

“We want to provide as much info and help as possible,” she said as she led a tour of the facility.

The amount of learning materials one could create there is endless. They offer computers, a color printer, a scanner, overhead projectors, book binding machines, laminators, and an art waxer that applies wax to the back of laminated cut-outs so you can stick them onto walls or posters. There are rows and rows of boxes labeled with such things as “dinosaurs,” “math” and “fine arts.” Inside are examples of materials made by other teachers and sample curricula for those topics. You can make games, flip books, mobiles, posters – as far as the imagination takes you.

Teacher Cindy Leon was tackling the tedious task of creating laminated frames to showcase her students’ best work on the classroom wall. Formerly at Stockdale Elementary School, she was displaced by the budget cuts at Panama-Buena Vista Union School District and was moved to Sandrini Elementary School. The frames are required by her new school’s principal. At her old school, Leon would just staple the students’ work to the wall, which got messy, she said.

“It takes time now to makes these,” she said as she cut out enough frames for a potential class size of 33 students. “But they’ll last a long time and I won’t have to worry about them. I wish I did this last year.”

If it weren’t for The Learning Center, second-year special education teacher Miriam Matos-Brown wouldn’t know what to do. All of her students, grade five to eight, have autism and are non-verbal. Every lesson she teaches has to be visual, tactile and understandable by her students.

“Everything we do has to be modified,” said Matos-Brown, herself a mother of an autistic child.

For example, this year she will be teaching early American history to her students. When she gets to the lesson on Paul Revere, reading the traditional poem “The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow will mean nothing to them, she said. So she’s creating a game board where the students can move him down the road, over a bridge, and so on.

For science, she’ll be teaching the basics of a food chain by handing out laminated cut-outs of plants and animals. The students will place them in order on a poster.

She also makes a lot of puzzles using a template and a cut-out machine at the center. She figured out that waxing the backs of the laminated puzzle pieces will help them stick together better. She’ll be doing puzzles of all the major American heroes this year.

“My kids do a lot of puzzles. It gives them confidence because most of them are good at it,” she said.

Matos-Brown said she could not have come up with all of these ideas without the help of Padgett and the other ladies who work at The Learning Center. As a special education teacher, she is able to use all of the available materials for free.

“I would never have the ideas, or the strategy, or even the paper to do this. I couldn’t afford it. Just the cost of ink alone, or the lamination. This would cost me thousands,” she said.

For more information about The Learning Center, call 636-4783 or visit http://kcsos.kern.org/tlc.