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Thursday afternoon, June 14, Cape Henlopen School District Superintendent George Stone told Heather Hastings the high school’s agriscience program is not being cut and a second teacher will be hired. Hastings, the school’s only certified agriscience teacher, promptly reported the message to others by email at 2:20 p.m.
In a telephone interview less than one hour earlier, Stone said an additional staff member could be added if enough students registered to justify another unit for the program. Units are numbers of students used by the state Department of Education to determine how many teachers it will help pay for in each school district. The state generally pays 70 to 75 percent of the salary and related costs associated with a teacher hired based on a unit count.
“If the numbers generate a unit the position will be posted and filled,” Stone said, adding that the district absolutely supports the agriscience program.
Principal John Yore, who had not yet heard the news, said he hoped it was true. Hastings said she was grateful and delighted.
Stone’s decision came less than six hours before agriscience students and parents were to appear before the school board to fight to save the agriscience program – a program that had been placed in danger by staff cutbacks designed to balance the district’s budget.
Despite having an excellent year, Hastings and several of her students said they had been agonizing over the health of the program for several weeks.
When Hastings was called into the administrative office to meet with Assistant Principal Diane Mzrack last month and informed of how many students had signed up for agricultural classes, Hastings said she was elated to see the impact of her hard work and the successes of her students. Her elation was short-lived, however, as Mzrack informed her that a second agriculture science teacher, promised during 2005, would not be hired.
Hastings said she had not been called in to celebrate the success of the high school’s agricultural science program. Instead, she said, she had been called in to decide which students would be rejected from agriscience classes and which classes would be eliminated to the end that her goal of fulfilling her students’ needs would be extremely burdensome if not simply impossible.
Hastings said she had 71 pre-registered students sign up to study animal sciences, 45 for aquaculture, 10 for environmental science, 12 for veterinary technology, 20 for introduction to horticulture, 10 for floriculture (a course for seniors only), two for greenhouse, 20 for horticulture and approximately 50 wanted to take the freshman course, introduction to agriculture science.
“The numbers meant we needed 11 full classes of students, and that requires two full-time teachers,” Hastings said. “I was told we needed to scale back and asked what should be cut.”
Hastings said she faced a dilemma because she could not cut classes seniors needed to complete their career pathways for graduation, meaning that specialized courses, like veterinary technology and floriculture, could not be eliminated. The decision was made to delete the introduction to horticulture class from the schedule, setting all incoming students a year back on their career pathways because the introduction course is a prerequisite to the study of horticulture.
“By eliminating that fundamental agriscience course we were in danger of destroying the subject as a viable career path for our high school students,” Hastings said.
In addition to deciding which classes to cut, Hastings had to decide which students to cut from the classes that remained. “I tried not to cut the sophomores, but ended up cutting all juniors and seniors who had not taken agriscience classes before,” she said. “Whatever keen interests or abilities those students had in this area would not have been discovered - at least not at Cape,” she said.
Hastings said the school district has been aware of the need for an agriscience program since 1999. Then, one of only two high schools in Delaware without an agriscience program in existence, it formed an AG Development Committee. The committee’s survey showed one-fourth of the student body said they were interested in taking agriscience courses if they were offered.
Hastings points to the plans for the agriscience program, prepared by the district and submitted to the state in 1999 – plans that promised agriscience students a building by 2000 and two full-time teachers by 2005. Instead of two full-time teachers, Hastings was assisted by teachers with other backgrounds who picked up some agricultural science courses, but lacked certification in the field. As feelings of frustration grew plans were made, all of which came to a halt with Stone’s announcement.
Hastings said the future now looks brighter for the student members of Cape’s active FFA chapter, who already enjoyed an extraordinary year. They won two first-place awards for work in dairy judging and zoology in addition to eight other awards, placing second to seventh in the state in various competitive career development events at the state fair last July. They attended their first national convention in Indianapolis during October, promoted spay-neuter day in February, helped control a goat herd and held their AG Extravaganza during May. Cape’s FFA members won 11 additional awards at the state convention held during March.
To highlight the year, the National FFA Organization named Hastings the Delaware winner of the Agriscience Teacher of the Year award. She will be recognized at the Delaware State Fair July 27. The national award will be announced at the national convention during October.
Contact Georgia Leonhart at g.l.leonhart@comcast.net
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