Encinitas schools propose $800K for yoga classes
Encinitas Union School District has proposed spending $800,000 to continue a controversial yoga program that made headlines because of legal challenges over its constitutionality.
For the past few years, yoga instruction in Encinitas schools was funded by grants, but that funding wasn’t renewed this year. The district’s plan to pick up the tab has angered parents who say the money would be better spent on science, physical education or art.
The proposed expenditure sparked a petition drive on Change.org, which generated more than 400 signatures against the plan by Friday afternoon.
It’s the second time the district’s yoga program has come under scrutiny. In 2013, some parents filed a lawsuit arguing the ancient exercise and meditation practice constituted religious indoctrination. In 2015 an appeals court concurred with a Superior Court decision that the yoga exercises offered in Encinitas were not religious.
The current complaint comes from parents who say they don’t have a religious or philosophical problem with the program, but object to spending money on yoga when parents must raise money to pay for science teachers and arts programs.
“The biggest concern is, it’s essentially stealing from my kids’ education,” said Gregory Robin, the author of the online petition, and a parent of two first-grade daughters at Capri Elementary, and a 4-year-old son.
The district has provided twice-a-week yoga sessions to all students for the past four years, through $4 million in grants from the Encinitas-based Sonima Foundation.
When the foundation discontinued funding for the program for the next school year, district officials proposed spending $800,000 to keep it going. Parents who objected said they were astonished by the dollar figure.
“I’m not opposed to yoga if it’s free,” said Heidi Loren, mother of a first-grader and sixth-grader at Olivenhain Pioneer Elementary School. “That was fine. But to pull money from the school is crazy. Eight hundred thousand dollars, seriously? I mean, what in the world?”
Encinitas Superintendent Tim Baird, who serves on the advisory board to the Sonima Foundation, did not respond to requests for an interview Friday.
He provided an FAQ sheet, however, in which the district described the program as health and wellness education, and cited research by UC San Diego and the district linking it to increased attendance, decreased behavior issues, and improved physical health and skills.
Since it was introduced in 2012, the yoga program expanded from one instructor to its current staff of 11 full-time and four part-time teachers. The spending proposed for next year would pay for those positions, and represent a “bridge” that would allow the district to seek new grants, or find ways to reduce costs.
The monies could come from various one-time sources, including reserve funds, money from energy-saving programs, potential new donations, general fund dollars, or some combination of those funding sources, the statement explained.
Parents, however, said they amount is far more than the district can afford, and say there are more important uses for that money. Robin said that the proposed spending for yoga conflicts with the focus on mathematics, science and language arts expressed in the district’s mission statement.
“In the mission statement it supports those things, but when they don’t have the funds, they ask the parents to pay for science and arts,” Robin said. “They’re actively taking the stance that yoga is more important than the items in their mission statement, which aren’t funded.”
He said that if the district wants to offer enrichment classes it should diversify the choices for students.
“If they were interested in finding out what is best for the kids, a more exploratory program would be the way to do it, with things like running, baseball, musical instruments or art,” he said. “There were no options. It was just yoga.”
deborah.brennan@sduniontribune.com
