One day when PPS tries to “shut down” the music dept. in a high school, students, teachers, and parents from all the high schools will come together and say “No! you cannot do this here or anywhere else. This is an outrage. We need these classes, these instruments, more than your PR dept, more than any consultant you hire to study us, more than any administrator. And,while we’re at, it let’s talk about NCLB and the war on Iraq where the money that should be going into education is lining the pockets of fascist warmongerers. By the way, until ALL of us have what we deserve NONE of us are moving from this point.”

We can do this kind of thing. Jeff (and Roosevelt and Madison and Marshall) don’t need charity, they need solidarity. And until we do have that solidarity we will fighting each other over crumbs (or twenty year old broken instruments).

Thank you for indulging my little fantasy. Let me know when the direct action begins. I did get a glimmer of this when the SEIU LOCAL 503 workers chanted about Houston tactics and walked out of a school board meeting in unison.

Same thing with the pianos: once the tuner retired, they cut the position rather than hire a replacement to “save money.” But now the pianos do not get tuned unless someone donates services or money for that specifically. How many PTAs do you know of that hold fundraisers for piano tuning? Horrifying, the shape those pianos are in now.

You’re right instruments should last decades and they do. The schools have instruments in daily use over 50 years old (and beyond). But there is a limit to how many times you can repair something. Kind of like the old saying, “I’ve had the same hammer for 40 years, only had to replace the handle three times and head twice”.

Sorry to inform you about the instruments but they are considered district instruments not school instruments. Whenever a program dies (gets shut down) the instruments are gathered up by the district and passed out to those programs with still existing programs. This is a long standing controversy. Instruments in the district are in need of some “refresh money” like the do with computers. When computers are 3 years old they are replaced with “refresh money”. The school district has not purchased any new instruments since 1988. Sad.

The first thing I looked at at the open house was the book of students’ writing they used to publish. Yeah, used to, because their funding got dropped. But they will publish again this year! I’m not sure where the funding is coming from but they said they are.

Sad. I sure hope that Potter being there for the week will raise consciousness….and funds.

I’ve long believed that the Jefferson community won’t sit idly by while the school is gradually starved to death. Hopefully the broader community, including the school board, will come to the same conclusion and start rectifying the injustices that have been heaped on this once (and still) proud school.

Now, as Steve B. reminds us, let’s not forget about Roosevelt, Madison and Marshall and their many poorly served feeder schools.

Excellent post once again, Steve.

1996 was the year that the draconian cuts began. My position as a middle school choir director was eliminated. When the teacher transfer rounds were posted, I noticed a choir director position at Jeff, so I applied for it. A week or so later I received a letter from Human Resources telling me that the position had been “withdrawn.”

I thought that was odd, so I called an HR administrator that I knew and asked her to explain. She told me that the position had been eliminated AFTER the teachers transfer rounds were posted. Wasn’t that decision supposed to be made beforehand? Yes, but it wasn’t.

Just another illustration of what Jefferson decision- making has been like.

The Roosevelt cluster is grossly underserved in terms of music as well. There is very little music in its feeder schools. Jefferson can at least take a little solace that Ockley Green has music classes.

I was hoping after Roosevelts run at the state basketball playoffs last year that they would notice the lack of a band program (no pep band) and try and reconstitute the program–no dice. With all the K-8s in the Roosevelt cluster it would be nice to see some music programs put into place.