By Peter Day
Senior Reporter
LUCERNE VALLEY — After considering alternatives that would have saved the program but decimated the entire staff, the Lucerne Valley Unified School District's governing board has agreed to self-fund the Pre-K Academy.
The move keeps the current program intact and saves the jobs of all seven employees. The Pre-K Academy is housed in the Julia Bell Early Childhood Center, which was dedicated last year in honor of the late Julia Bell, a beloved educator, teacher, school principal and school board member.
"We said we would support this program 100 percent," said school board president Jim Harvey.
The difficult decision made during a special meeting on Thursday came after the district grappled with how to keep the program afloat after learning that the LVUSD had lost its funding from First 5 California. First 5 California was created in 1998 after voters approved Proposition 10, which affirmed that children's education and health is a top priority.
The five-member school board tasked interim Superintendent Dan Leary, a former veteran administrator of the Apple Valley Unified School District, with exploring funding alternatives. Two alternatives surfaced — a California Preschool Program that locally is administered by San Bernardino County Schools, and preschool program administered through the San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors.
According to Leary, both alternatives have merit, but he leaned toward the state preschool program due, in part, because the program's mission is solely to educate children. The county program, on the other hand, is one of a diverse assortment of responsibilities maintained through the San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors.
Moreover, "The county program could go away at any time," according to Leary.
The dilemma, however, is whichever agency took over the program "will have to have their own staffs," Leary said. That would mean the district would lay off the staff at the end of the 2015-16 school year and hope the new program agency would hire the staff back.
"The program is only good as the staff," board member Tom Courtney said in an affirmation of the importance off keeping the current employees.
But there would be no guarantees.
"They can't make any promises," Leary said.
However, Leary believes there is a rationale for the new provider for rehire the staff. "Lucerne Valley is remote," he said. "Why would you bring people from the outside? It wouldn't make sense."
With all Pre-K Academy employees sitting nervously in a row, the board and Leary discussed the pro's and con's at length.
Currently the program costs $347,000 to run; however, the staff believes it could cut that amount to an annual budget of $212,000 by reducing hours and cutting expenses to the bare bone.
According to Harvey, the district could commission a grant writing expert who recently help procure funding for the Lucerne Valley Market and Hardware Store. Chuck Bell, whose wife Julia Bell inspired the name of the education center, suggested that possibly proceeds from the annual Ride in the Rocks benefit bike, ride and walk event to go toward funding the program.
Ultimately, however, it was the will of the school board to affirm its commitment to the program and gamble that a viable funding source will soon appear, providing a stable, financially secure future for the Pre-K Academy.
"If our goal is to keep our preschool independent then it's a risk worth taking," Courtney said.
"I don't know why I have a good feeling about this," Harvey said. "But I have a good feeling about this."