The School Committee will use some contingency funds to restore popular programs which were slated to be cut.
WILBRAHAM – Fifth and sixth grade band will be restored at Wilbraham Middle School, but seventh grade French will not.
Hampden-Wilbraham Regional School Superintendent M. Martin O’Shea announced a list of programs which will be restored at a public forum for parents held Thursday night in the Minnechaug Regional High School auditorium.
O’Shea said the School Committee has decided to apply up to $490,000 in contingency funds to restore some popular programs which were slated to be cut.
The programs that will be restored include fifth grade band, a science and engineering program at Wilbraham Middle School, which also will be expanded to Thornton Burgess School in Hampden, and an information technology program at Wilbraham Middle School, which also will be added to Thornton Burgess School in Hampden.
O’Shea said an art program at Thornton Burgess School will be added to Wilbraham Middle School.
He said the school district is making an effort to insure that equivalent programs are offered at schools in Wilbraham and Hampden. The two towns share a high school, but have their own elementary and middle schools.
O’Shea said Spanish will continue to be offered to eighth graders, but French will no longer be offered to seventh graders.
After the current French students complete high school, the school district is considering replacing French with Mandarin Chinese and continuing to offer Spanish and Latin.
There is increasing interest in Latin by students in the region, O’Shea said. He said the school district feels it should offer a non-Western foreign language such as Chinese instead of French.
He said the school district anticipates cutting teachers for the next school year, but the cuts will be accommodated due to some declining enrollment. Class size will be kept at 22 to 23 per class, he said.
The regional school district anticipates that state aid to education may be low again next year which could result in more cuts if there are not concessions by the Hampden Wilbraham Education Association, which represents the towns' teachers.
The teachers are due to get a 3 percent raise for the 2012-2013 school year, Hampden-Wilbraham School Committee Chairman Peter Salerno said.