Students and retired teacher urge Brookings board to preserve middle-school art as superintendent defends schedule changes
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Summary
A retired art teacher and a seventh-grade student urged the Brookings School District board to retain middle-school art access; Superintendent Dr. Schultz said art is not being eliminated but that schedule and boundary audits require staffing reassignments to meet budget and class-size targets.
A retired Brookings teacher and a seventh-grade student urged the Brookings School District 05-1 board to keep robust art offerings at Mickelson Middle School, saying classroom access and student engagement would suffer if staffing is reduced.
"I would like to share my concerns with the cutting of the Mickelson Middle School art department," said Sean Hassett, a retired district art teacher, who read a letter citing research that regular arts participation correlates with higher academic recognition and lower disciplinary incidents. "Creating only one position for one art teacher in the building the size of Mickelson Middle School does not come close to meeting the needs of our deserving students," he said.
Seventh-grader Reese Fayejit told the board the art teacher has changed students' confidence and provided an important outlet. "She's not just filling a position, she's changing lives," Reese said, warning that proposed changes would reduce opportunities across grade levels and leave some students with only two quarters of art in eighth grade.
Superintendent Dr. Schultz responded that the district has not "cut" art programming but instead is adjusting staffing and schedules after audits to meet class-size targets and budget constraints. "Art itself is just simply not being cut. That just simply isn't true," Schultz said, explaining that middle-school schedule inefficiencies (extra prep, study halls overseen by art teachers) and district-wide class-size floors mean the administration recommended consolidating two middle-school art positions into one while keeping districtwide art staffing intact.
Schultz said the district found approximately $1 million in budget pressure from inflation, insurance and utility increases and used boundary and schedule audits to reassign positions without eliminating programs. She said the district still plans to offer art to all students but acknowledged the scheduling might limit when sixth graders can select art classes.
Board members pressed for data and told administrators they want measures to monitor effects of schedule changes on student outcomes. One board member suggested collecting evidence over time so the district can assess whether schedule changes create unintended academic or social harms at the middle-school level.
The board did not take a formal vote specifically on art staffing at the meeting; the superintendent described letters of reassignment to middle-school staff and said personnel decisions would follow applicable processes.
The superintendent also said the district will adopt a new K–8 ELA curriculum aligned with the science of reading and reorganize many ELA roles so reading and writing are integrated rather than taught separately, a change administrators said is supported by best-practice research.
What happens next: board members requested more detailed scheduling data and said the issue will inform upcoming negotiation and staffing discussions.
