Hundreds sign Cedar Rapids fifth-graders’ ‘save Spanish’ petition

CEDAR RAPIDS - When Ben Drzycimski's class was told the Cedar Rapids school district was cutting elementary Spanish classes, the fifth grader's hand shot into the air. He stood up.

'I'm gonna start a petition,” he said. 'We gotta get somethin' rollin'.”

Since first grade, Ben has taken Spanish classes at Coolidge Elementary, 6225 1st Ave SW, as part of the Foreign Language in Elementary Schools program. District officials announced last month that program would be cut next school year as part of a $2.3 million reduction.

This year's budget cuts are the latest in a series of annual reductions, which Superintendent Brad Buck has said are the result of consistently inadequate state aid. This year's reduction also claimed 13 high school teacher positions, including librarians at Jefferson and Kennedy high schools.

At baseball practice that day, Ben and his teammates couldn't stop talking about the Spanish classes. Ben's 6-year-old sister had been looking forward to Spanish, and she cried when she heard it was going away. His friend Adam Panoch's little sister had gotten upset, too.

Later, Ben got out a piece of three-ring notebook paper. In pencil, he wrote 'Petition to Save Spanish” at the top and underlined it. Then he numbered every line.

'Do you like Spanish and would you like to keep it?” he asked his classmates. They did, and they scribbled their first names on the page.

Soon Ben was running out of space. So he numbered the back of the page. He handed his clipboard over to Adam.

'I was wondering, would you like to sign our petition to save Spanish?” Adam, 11, asked students in his class. They did.

Then another friend from baseball took the petition to Coolidge's day care. The boys started going to more classrooms and asking teachers if they would pass the petition around. Adam said he asked some teachers and administrators if they'd like to sign, and many of them did.

By the time they finished, the petition was four pages, front and back, with 264 signatures. Ben will be presenting it to the school board on Monday night.

Ben's dad, Scott Drzycimski, was impressed by his son's dedication. Usually an 11-year-old loses interest in a project like this, he said, but the petition has stuck.

'We certainly support his passion and the interest he has,” Drzycimski said. 'At the same time, it's a good lesson for all of us to remember that you only have so much money, and you have to make tough decisions on how you're going to spend it.”

At home, the petition became a lesson on financial responsibility.

District funds are divided into different pools of money, each with strict rules about how its funds can be spent. Programs like Spanish are funded by the general fund, which is affected by legislative decisions.

If the district decided to keep Spanish, Drzycimski told Ben, they'd have to get rid of something else.

Ben tried to make a list of things he'd rather sacrifice. Can't we defund the playground? he asked his dad. No, the funds for that come from a different pool of money. What about technology, like our new Surface Pro 3's? No, that wouldn't help either.

Adam tried to figure it out too. In the end, neither of them could find a better way to balance the district's budget.

'Dr. Buck can't help it,” Adam said. 'It's the legislature.”

Ben plans to send copies of the petition to local politicians after he presents it to the school board.

Even if this year's funding levels mean Spanish classes go away next year, he said he's hopeful his efforts - and those of the 263 students and teachers who supported him - will remind the board to resurrect the program in the future, should funding ever allow.