Eighty percent of Paramount High School teacher Cara Cruzan’s ninth grade students have never visited the ocean, though they’ve spent their entire lives only 18 miles away from it.
So three times a year, Manhattan Beach’s Roundhouse Marine Studies Lab and Aquarium brings the ocean to them.
For the past five years, the aquarium’s outreach program has allowed kids from Manhattan Beach to Montebello and everywhere in between to experience hands-on marine life education right in their own classrooms.
“For my inner city kids who are trapped here because of money, it makes all the difference for us to have this outreach program,” Cruzan said. “The kids get connected. When you can visit a classroom where kids have never been to the beach, it changes their lives.”
But as fewer schools, locally and otherwise, can afford to pay for field trips, the red-roofed Roundhouse — located at the end of the Manhattan Beach Pier — is facing a $100,000 shortfall from its $250,000 annual budget, jeopardizing its ability to help schools and remain open to the public free of charge.
“That’s been the real problem, because schools used to pay the aquarium for these programs.” said aquarium volunteer Lynne Grosse. “Then schools got into a bind and couldn’t pay anymore. Now we’re at the point where schools can’t even pay for buses. So we went to grants and now those are drying up too.”
Even schools two miles away can’t get their kids to the end of the pier.
“We don’t have buses to get them there,” said Maggie Mabery, who teaches 7th and 8th grade science at Manhattan Beach Middle School and also schedules presentations in her classroom.
Officials from the Roundhouse, a non-profit organization that receives no government funding, fear that for the first time in 30 years they may have to charge admission to the public.
They are launching a community-based fundraising program campaign in order to continue funding educational programs and keep aquarium doors open free of charge.
“We are reaching out to individuals and businesses in the community to help fill this gap with their tax-deductible donations before the end of the year,” said Chuck Milam, treasurer of the Roundhouse board of directors.
Beyond the pier
The Roundhouse aquarium was built in 1979 by the non-profit organization Oceanographic Teaching Stations with the goal of teaching school children about the ocean and the environment.
Within a few years, it also became open to the public.
Run by a staff of three full-time employees and 75 volunteers, today the aquarium showcases a tide pool touch tank with sea stars, sea urchins and sea anemones. Other tanks feature sharks, sunflower stars, thornback rays, California’s Garibaldi fish, eels and many other and marine animals common to the Santa Monica Bay.
“Many local families bring their kids to hear stories and learn about the ocean during free public hours,” said Roundhouse co-director Valerie Hill.
The aquarium also hosts daily field trips for kids in preschool through high school. Students hold animals, visit the beach and learn how human behaviors affect the ocean.
As most schools can’t afford to visit the aquarium due to a mounting budget crisis, aquarium biologists five years ago began cramming marine samples into their cars and driving all over LA County to give presentations through the outreach program.
Various grants have allowed them to offer the program at no cost to many of the schools they serve. A year ago, the now-dissolved Manhattan Beach Property Owners Association gave a $100,000 grant to the aquarium for a new van to travel to schools.
The van is packed with touch tanks and ice chests that make it possible to more efficiently take sea creatures on the road.
“The grant really allowed us to expand the outreach program so much more, in being able to get out to kids wouldn’t otherwise be able to get the education they need,” Hill said.
Fish guts
A typical outreach trip includes a PowerPoint presentation and hands-on activities where kids observe live animals and other specimens that coincide with what they are learning. Other lessons are geared toward pollution and conservation.
“The kids love it,” Mabery said. “They came in and did a squid dissection, which I’ve never got to do as a teacher. It’s so hands-on. The kids get to touch everything, get to pull out the beak, the eyeballs and intestines, and pop the ink sac. It’s one of those experiences where we explain it, but then they get to touch it and understand it.”
“These people who come to our classroom are real scientists that give a personal touch to science,” Cruzan said. “It gives the kids someone to look up to other than their teacher. They think, ‘I could be like that one day if I want to.’”
In the last year, several of the dozen or so grants that allow the Roundhouse to provide such programs have been reduced or disappeared altogether, leaving aquarium employees scrambling for funds.
Hill scours the Internet every day looking for new grants while the board is considering several ways to generate more revenue and cut expenses.
Ideas have included everything from renting out the facility for bat/bar mitzvahs, weddings, and other special events, in addition to birthday parties already held there. The aquarium has also started an aggressive letter-writing campaign to potential donors and planned special fundraising events, such as a carnival that will be held this weekend. They have also considered closing the aquarium on Sundays, as well charging admission.
“We need help from the community,” said Roundhouse board of directors president Matt Friedman. “We want to keep the doors open to the public, without an admission charge, for the benefit to all who live in the South Bay and visitors to our community.”
Contributors of $100 or more will be recognized with a plaque on the Roundhouse’s donor board, which was donated in May by the 2010 Leadership Manhattan Beach class.
Mabery and Cruzan may teach on different sides of the tracks, but the effect the aquarium’s educational program has had on their students has been equally powerful.
One of Mabery’s former students went on to volunteer at the aquarium and applied to a college marine science program.
After a presentation on the environment, one of Cruzan’s students told her she now knew what she wanted to do with her life.
“She said, ‘I want to go into resource management. I already researched it and I’m going to Cal Poly to do it,’” Cruzan said. “These kids are really affected by it. You may think they’re just inner city ninth graders, but they care.”
The Roundhouse will host a carnival this weekend on both Saturday and Sunday from 10 a.m. to sunset. The cost is free. Tickets will be sold to participate in activities that will include craft-making, games with prizes, face painting, and more. The facility is open daily from 3 p.m. to sunset on weekdays and from 10 a.m. to sunset on weekends and holidays. For more information or to volunteer or donate, call 310-379-8117 or visit www.roundhouseaquarium.org. ER
