The sound of silence

By Cody Bozarth

As school districts continue to trim budgets, keep up with mandates while receiving less funding, there is a common assumption that arts programs are among the first on the chopping block.

Over recent years many local school districts have had to scale back the amount of art programs they offer, but superintendents from local districts say there’s hardly anything that hasn’t suffered from reduced funding.

Still, a recent decision by the Meredosia Chambersburg School District has one band booster calling it “the day the music died.”

The school board approved eliminating elementary school music classes, though Superintendent Ron Gilbert said the district is working on replacing it with a weekly music program.

Glen Bowman, a long-time supporter of school music programs, believed this decision was an indicator of things to come.

“I would say the music program is dead at Meredosia,” he said. “I think, how can you recruit kids into band without elementary music? … They lay the foundation for their high school program. If you don’t have 5th grade music, you won’t even have that foundation.”

On Wednesday, other band boosters delivered a petition with more than 350 signatures to the school board, requesting that it reinstate the music program and showing statistics that demonstrate students who are involved in music programs perform better in other classes.

“When they start doing cuts, they never start cutting athletics,” Bowman said. “Usually they all pay lip service to keeping sports and eliminate art and music. There’s a lot to be said for kids that don’t excel in sports. They need an alternate outlet to keep them in school. Painting, sculpting, music, they may excel in that.”

Gilbert said he disagreed that arts programs are the only activities being affected in school districts, much less his own.

“I think folks who are greatly involved in those programs might see it that way, but when you look over the whole scale of things, different areas are requiring staff cuts and program cuts,” he said. “It’s not isolated to fine arts. We’re in an era that everything affecting academics are being cut. … We’ve had athletic programs here strained to the point where there are some functioning and some not functioning.”

He said the decision to eliminate elementary music classes and pursue a weekly program was made because the district is required to keep up with Adequate Yearly Progress requirements.

“With unfunded mandates and common core standards with no support form the state, we have to do things that make more time for classroom instruction,” Gilbert said. “Reading writing, math and science.”

North Green School District is in a similar situation , with its board having voted to eliminate elementary music classes for next year. Superintendent Les Stevens said he hoped it might come back at some point, but for now the district has no plans for an alternate program.

“AYP is what it is. Really doesn’t mean anything,” he said. “It’s based on a flawed system, on a snapshot of how kids do on a couple days in the spring. So I’m not worried about it. Our concern is more on student growth. … This has all to do with the economy.”

Stevens said he also disagreed that arts programs are the first things to go in a tight budget, as the school has already had to eliminate or scale back on numerous extracurriculars including student clubs and athletic programs.

“We closed a building last year,” he said. “I don’t know what gets more significant than that.”

Beardstown School District Superintendent Reggie Clinton said recent years’ budgets have required the elimination of some arts programs, but not any art class time during the school day.

“The only real impact it’s had on arts programs would be the clubs or after school activities,” Clinton said. “We did eliminate funding for out art club and some of the music after school activities like choir. As far as regular classroom days, it hasn’t impacted them. Those are still in place. But it is impacting our stipends for extracurricular things done after school hours.”

Jacksonville School District Superintendent Steve Ptacek said his district has no plans to make any cuts to arts programs at this time, and added that arts programs and classes were a high priority for the school.

“I firmly believe a top end academically performing school has a strong fine arts program,” Ptacek said.

Bowman said he has three children teaching music in separate school districts and knows that all seem to be struggling, but asks, “are we willing to stand up for the arts in our schools?”

“Meredosia is important but I think that a lot of people, if they want to keep arts in the schools, they need to speak up in all districts,” he said.