Too Late I guess

It seems that the school board passed the motion for our librarians to “deliver an increased proportion of non-instructional time.” at a savings of $410,000 at the expense of every student in the district who will now receive less or no music from a specialist teacher.

Its sad.

Maybe not, I just got this response from one of our Trustees:

I am very supportive of the Arts and Music for all the reasons you mention. I was not aware that these cuts may impact music programs in the way you are stating. I have forwarded your letter to John Lewis and our Board Chair and Vice Chair for comments.”

I wonder how the notes from the public meetings missed this important aspect of transferring time to librarians.

Save Music in our Schools!

The district has proposed that teacher librarians be given 50% of the NIT time at each school as a cost cutting measure. What has been left un-stated is that these NIT hours are currently used to provide Music programs in the elementary schools. The effect of the change to the teacher librarian’s covering NIT time will mean some large portion of our children will not get Music instruction, and our schools will not have a dedicated Music teacher.

Visit http://savemusic44.wordpress.com to see how you can help.

Do it soon, the board is announcing their plan on January 19th, 2010.

More budget cuts

Well it seems that our school district is still feeling the effects of the recession. At a meeting on November 18th it was suggested that they cut the time of teacher librarians to 50%, which effectively cuts the time to music programs district wide as well. If you don’t understand how this works essentially teachers are given 100 minutes a week to prepare lessons and do marking etc., while each teacher is having this non-instructional time, someone has to be with their class. Traditionally this role fell to music teachers, who provided a music program in this time. This year  teacher librarians were told to fill 25% of this time, and next year it will be more.  In my case this year it meant that there are 3+ classes who don’t get music from me, and I am teaching math learning assistance instead of music for part of my day.

I wonder if parents realize what is happening? Will music programs become like band and strings programs in our district, and be funded by parents directly? Could they?

It is very sad.

Please come to the meeting on December 1st at the Lucas Center to voice your opinion. Budget Challenge 2010 is a meeting about funding for our schools that will directly impact music programs across the district. Please come and make your voice heard to support our music program.