By David Harry

Staff Writer

Denise Turner said she advocated for a students’ smoking lounge when she was in high school.

Tom Griffin said his health classes at Portland’s Deering High School centered on bone structure and the nuclear threat from the Cold War.

Today, as the two health teachers at Scarborough Middle School, Turner and Griffin now hope the health studies program they have developed over the last dozen years will not fall victim to budget cuts as the Board of Education considers its fiscal year 2011 budget.

Administers created three scenarios when they drafted their fiscal 2011 budget. Two involve reductions from the current $35.19 million school budget to either $34.62 million or $34.05 million.

Superintendent David Doyle said a third budget with no reductions in curriculum or positions would cost $36.89 million in fiscal year 2011.

The $1.7 million increase anticipates settling labor contracts under negotiation with teachers, bus drivers, food service workers, custodians and building administrators, and accounts for 12 percent increases in health insurance premiums and 5 percent increases in dental insurance premiums, Doyle said.

In a meeting with the Board of Education Finance Committee last Wednesday, Scarborough Middle School Principal Barbara Hathorn proposed eliminating six full-time teaching positions, including a health teacher, to help lower the total school district budget to $34.62 million.

Hathorn said the full-time humanities teacher position also would be eliminated to meet a $34.05 million budget.

Griffin has taught at the school for 23 years, Turner for 12. Because their contract considers tenure as only one factor to decide who gets laid off, Griffin and Turner are not sure how job eliminations may play out.

Both say it will be impossible to maintain the program at its current level.

Griffin teaches health classes to sixth-graders while Turner teaches eighth-graders and the two split seventh-grade classes. Curriculum is presented for one semester to accommodate all students.

The program they’ve created and refined with student feedback begins in sixth grade with lessons about health problems such as skin cancer and diabetes and dangers of smoking and steroid use.

In the seventh-grade, students learn about HIV and AIDS, CPR training, the dangers of marijuana and perform community service projects.

In eighth grade, students learn about human sexuality, including sexually transmitted diseases, the consequences of alcohol use and establishing healthy relationships and dating.

Turner said there has been little community resistance to introducing the curriculum and they’ve reached a middle ground on what is taught because contraceptives are not available to students in Scarborough schools.

“We are always growing as new topics come up,” said Turner, who added that discussions about adolescent depression are becoming more common as well.

While parents may have less luck convincing teens to change, lessons in school sometimes lead to better behavior, such as using sun block or eating white instead of wheat bread, Turner said.

 Griffin and Turner said they aren’t certain how health offerings will change if a teaching position is eliminated.

Each topic they consider restructuring seems too vital to alter, they said.

“Parents teach best through role modeling,” Griffin said, “but we believe the kids need this. They tell us that.”

Staff writer David Harry can be reached at 282-4337, ext. 219