After 19 years of teaching German at East, Karen Pearson will not be teaching the class in the future due to its cancellation here at East. This year’s 12 students currently enrolled in German 2, 3 and 4 classes will be the last German students at East.
A large part in the cancellation of German was the small enrollment. The number of students who enrolled in all of the 2014-15 German classes was a total of eight students.
“Electives are enrollment-based so if not enough student are enrolled, then the elective doesn’t [exist],” associate principal Jeff Storey said.
According to Pearson, the district is cutting classes that have low enrollment and are continuing to decrease.
“What is going on in the district is that they are looking to maximize their use of dollars,” Pearson said. “So for classes that have smaller enrollment, if they see that there is not much of a future for them, then they are just cutting them out.”
Despite the low enrollment, it was already decided that the program would end in the future as of last year.
“Last year they told me that this would be coming that they would be phasing out the German program and I said ‘ok that’s understandable’ but what they didn’t say was ‘by the way we are cutting it out next year,’” Pearson said. “Last year the line was we are going to let the people who started the program finish it. I don’t think it’s fair to the kids. For myself there are other things I can do but for the kids it’s not fair.”
This year East stopped offering German 1, meaning that no one could start taking German. The only people that could take German were students who were already enrolled in German offered at East.
The students currently enrolled in German expected to be able to finish learning German in their high school careers.
“We were told that if we started the German program than we would be able to finish, but they completely cut it out for next year,” junior Jake Ruthrauff said. “Now I can’t go on too German 3 and other people can’t go on either.”
Although the German program is being cut, there is a chance that it could come back in the future. According to Pearson, the district stopped offering Latin in the late 70’s, early 80’s, but they brought the class back in the mid 90’s
“Anything can happen,” Pearson said. “By the time they bring it back, [if they bring it back] I’m going to be an old lady”.
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