Meeting with the School Board

Hello,

At last entry I left off at the point we were ready to present our findings to the school board.  We were excited and thought our recommendations were well done plus we had John, our consultant there to help us explain things.

It was called to order at 7:00 am in a conference room at school, all 7 school board members plus the superintendent as well as the curriculum director were there to meet with the 5 parents plus John that were selected to be there.  We did have a few people interested looking on from the sidelines.  We had distributed a couple days prior to the meeting the final report prepared by John to each member at the meeting.

We started with a synopsis of issues we found that needed work to sustain and grow a music program in the district.  FTE distribution amongst the 8 district schools, making music affordable by developing a plan to put an instrument in all kids hands, develop a curriculum to measure the programs development,....ding ding ding..... we have a winner!  The word No curriculum struck a chord and the whole time was spent with the board telling us we needed to apologize to the curriculum director for such harsh language.   Admin and board discounted all our work on the basis that we would dare suggest that the district was running the program with no standards in place.

We were dismissed and sent away with our tails between our legs.

I have never felt so defeated in my life.  We spent time and resources to help these guys and all they want is an apology.

The next morning we stopped into the Curriculum Directors office and asked for a copy of the curriculum used to run the music program k-12.  She told us that the music curriculum was in a review cycle and handed us a syllabus from an 8th grade middle school general music class and said here is our curriculum.  We were right and I knew it because all the teachers in the meeting had indicated a lack of curriculum in the district.  Each teacher had taken it upon themselves to develop a plan for learning using a variety of programs and God Bless em because they were doing the best they could.  When I asked her about the response she was evasive and said the curriculum was in review.

Curriculum is more than lesson books and study guides, it is a districts roadmap to learning with specific, achievable, and measurable tasks that students need to learn to advance.  Without a steady progression from k-12, the music program was going to struggle, especially at those points where schools intersect like 2 middle schools to 1 High School.  On top of that our one middle school was having trouble holding on to a band teacher at .5 FTE and there was a new face in front of the students 7 years in a row.  By year 7 the position was being dually served by the High School instructor at a .167 FTE position, that's an hour a day for 5 - 8 band.

Where do you go after a meeting like that???  Stay tuned, but I am sure you will start to see that this is a process that takes time and persistence.

Talk again soon!
Peace Out,
Rich