Don't cut this from schools' curriculum
| Saturday, Apr 04 2009 07:30 PM
Last Updated Saturday, Apr 04 2009 07:30 PM
Blue is for the expanse of sky on the western horizon that hints of adventures not yet imagined. Green is for the rolling hills of early spring so abundant with hidden life. Purple-grey is for the sea, so powerful and mysterious in its opaque vastness.
Pink is for the letters of termination sent last week to some of the naturalists who've made those colors, and all they signify, their life's work. Camp KEEP, the Kern County Superintendent of Schools' 35-year-old earth sciences education program based on the Central Coast, is in trouble. Things are so dire, I am compelled to attempt bad poetry.
Budget constraints are forcing Kern County school districts to reevaluate their priorities. The Kern Environmental Education Program, five days of intensive (and potentially life-changing) instruction that 6,000 local sixth-graders (and, at some schools, fifth-graders) experience each year, could be partially axed. The program's Cambria campus -- the other campus is near Los Osos -- is in particular jeopardy.
If enough schools, and school districts, bow out this year, the Cambria campus could be shut down. What that might mean to the long-term viability of the program isn't clear, but it's a road we don't want to go down.
This is a program worth saving. We've laid out the benefits in this space before, so I won't rehash too much of it now, except to say that the curriculum sets the stage for learning yet to come in high school and college; opens students' eyes to the world outside their suburban cocoons in ways no book or video could ever do; and provides a foundation for environmental stewardship that we can only pray that generation will accept.
Beyond that, typical 12-year-olds spend far too much time in front of TVs and video-game screens; a week at KEEP plants the notion that there's life beyond the sofa, that the joys of hiking trails and tide pools and gurgling streams can make Super Mario Bros. laughably irrelevant -- if not immediately, then a few years down the road.
I'll confess to a keep-KEEP bias: I have served as a volunteer camp counselor twice, and other than the time I was jolted to wide-eyed wakefulness by a flashlight falling from the bunk above and hitting me square in the forehead, I've found the experience borderline transformational. I have served (unreliably) on the KEEP Foundation since last fall.
The Greenfield Union School District has already decided to pull its schools out of the program, and the Panama-Buena Vista Union School District is considering the possibility. In the case of Panama-Buena Vista, which represents more than 20 percent of the 6,000 kids who attend the camp annually, that would be 15 schools -- and up to 15 weeks of KEEP. If it pulls the plug, KEEP will have to seriously consolidate and the Cambria campus likely goes. And if Cambria goes, schools in other districts may lose out as well.
The irony is that though PBV has a few schools with predominately low-income families, it also has schools with some of the wealthiest demographics. In many ways, poorer students gain the most from KEEP because they are less likely to have had experiences anything like the lessons of those five days. Every year, KEEP staffers report, dozens of campers admit they've never before laid eyes on the Pacific Ocean.
Further irony: Schools are typically compelled to help defray their district's Camp KEEP expenses with fund raising. (Bus transportation to and from the coast is the biggest expense.) Program observers say it's the lower-demographic schools that tend to work the hardest to cover those expenses; that's been the case this year.
The Panama-Buena Vista school board is tentatively scheduled to decide what to do about Camp KEEP on April 14. If you value that portion of the sixth-grade curriculum -- and believe the district should, too -- tell them now.
Reach Robert Price at rprice@bakersfield.com or www.stubblebuzz.com.
Lois Henry is irritated again -- this time about school district budgeting priorities. She's on page B1.
