Megan Reich on Music Cuts

Beaverton School Board Business Meeting • Monday, June 18, 2012 • Public Participation Comment, Megan Reich

Reminder on the Importance of Maintaining the Positions of our Music Directors                 

Good evening. My name is Megan Reich. I will be a senior next year at Southridge High School as a student in the band and a member of the Portland Youth Philharmonic.

Now, if I wanted to, I could sit here and tell you my story – of how music has motivated me through my struggles, or how I’m concerned for the future experiences of my younger siblings.

But this isn’t about me. This is about all the music students of the Beaverton School District. This is about every single student that is standing in this room, or sitting at home, who are all trying to ignore  the fact that when they – we – step into the school next year, or onto the field on the first day of band camp, it’s not going to be the same.

Because someone might be missing.

A band director to a musician is a coach to athletes. It is not only their knowledge, but their dedication and enthusiasm that inspires students to explore the arts, and in doing so, these students explore themselves.

I have never seen a teacher so passionate in what they do. It’s more than waving a stick around in circles. It’s surviving on coffee at 9pm with marching band, all for simply seeing their pride at Championships. It’s pausing and giving seniors a time to laugh over our memories the last rehearsal before state, it’s about knowing each and every student from more than just a name and instrument.

There’s a special kind of relationship between a band director and their students – a sense of community. I know at Southridge, after so many turbulent band director changes, I finally feel that we are beginning to weave our own story.

And if we must be faced with a new director, they will be welcomed, I can assure that. But, for all students in bands and choirs throughout the Beaverton School District, it is the playing of music that has given us an identity. It is the playing of music that has given us a passion to follow. It is the playing of music that has given us perseverance, friendships, dedication. It is the music programs here in the Beaverton School District that opened this door for us. And in the end, it is our band and choir directors that have supported us through all of this.

If any school in this district must lose their music teacher, they will truly lose a member of the family.

One parent’s commentary on the June 18 Beaverton School Board meeting

“I’m sorry, it is our practice not to respond to public questions.” I think school board spokesperson meant to say that they do not directly respond during the public comment period of the school board meeting; but, unfortunately the impression given to concerned parents, teachers and taxpayers on June 18 matched her spoken words exactly. A packed crowd dressed in red and supporting music education attended the meeting asking the board to re-examine their June 4 budget. A dozen plus impassioned arguments questioned figures used in the budget generation, asked for additional union discussion and challenged new programs added for the coming year. The public cry asked the board to re-examine or explain their choices. Instead, the board said very little. One member acknowledged the difficult situation and admitted they had been unaware of some specifics before adopting the budget; but still concluded the board was powerless – at least until the next teacher’s union contract was negotiated. Another board member responded that music programs were not completely cut from the schools. While these answers include truth, both were but partial answers to only a couple of the concerns presented. Among other things, public speakers that evening proposed increasing furlough days to save teaching positions. The board claimed no authority in this area, missing the request to just ASK union leadership to allow teachers to voice their wishes. It was factual that music is not being cut from the schools – but the board failed to even acknowledge why music throughout the district is slated for disproportionate cuts versus other disciplines, and made no comment regarding the fear that music programs will be decimated as award-winning music educators may be replaced by higher-seniority staff without essential experience. On other critical questions posed that evening, the public was left to hope for answers in the themed responses that Dr. Rose promised to release at a future date. At the top of that critical list – 1. Why did they approve a budget prepared using 2011/12 BUDGETED figures as a starting point rather than the significantly lower ACTUAL expenditures? The chair of the school board’s budget committee spoke openly about the need to correct this. 2. Why is the district diverting funds from proven, valuable education programs to add new programs for next year? Significant funding is included in the approved budget for ‘Teacher Collaboration’ and a new Information Technology program. These new programs are being funded as we hear claims that ‘unavoidable cuts’ have forced the district to wipe out BSD’s library program – the original information technology gatekeepers. At the June 4 meeting, Dr. Rose and the board pushed parents and teachers to blame Salem direct budget complaints there. Allusions were made to supporting a new local levy next fall. Well, my opinion is that blame is pointless. My daughter has only two remaining years of high school, and I have no desire to see them compromised to ‘send a message to Salem’. Dr. Rose stated that he had ‘no intention of defending the budget’. As a taxpaying citizen, I believe the public deserves some explanation. As a group, the parents and teachers in red expect to see a 2012-13budget that invests available funds wisely –investigating all options to preserve teachers. We expect to see inclusion of only proven programs. Show us this, and we will focus our energies on Salem and vocally support a fall tax levy for Beaverton Schools. On the other hand, if our concerns are ignored and funds are diverted to support pet projects, public trust and support for a new levy will become harder to find than a BSD librarian.

Laurie O’Brien

Southridge High School Parent

To the Beaverton School Board

June 18, 2012

Good evening,

My name is Judy Nielsen, and I am not only an Elementary Music Specialist with the Beaverton School District, but also the mother of five sons who graduated from this district.

There are many experiences I could share with you about the power of music in students’ lives.  Instead, I’ve chosen to focus on one serious ramification of cuts to music that you and the public may not be aware of.

Music teachers train in either instrumental or vocal/choral music.  Expertise in either of these disciplines comes from literally years of study and practice.  At one time, our Oregon teacher certification recognized that we were trained as either instrumentalists or vocalists.  However, our current Oregon certification lumps as all together as “Music” teachers, with no regard as to the area of our expertise.

At present, HR is planning on considering only our seniority and certification in placing us in positions for next year.  As close to twenty music teachers with less seniority are laid off, the remaining teachers may be placed into positions for which they have little or no training.

When I expressed my concerns about this issue, and asked HR to please survey us as to our expertise, I was told that our situation was just like an elementary teacher being assigned to teach 8th grade math.  I replied that nothing could be further from the truth.  Years of training as an instrumentalist or vocalist cannot be disregarded or suddenly learned from a book!

If the proposed music cuts go into effect, it would be utterly irresponsible of the district to place music teachers into any open music position without regard to our expertise.  Not only would it be irresponsible, it would eventually mean not just the reduction, but the death of music in the Beaverton schools.  Is this really what we want for the children we claim to serve?

I implore you to ask HR to take the time to survey us as to what we are experts at.  In light of the proposed and tragic cuts to music, isn’t this the least the district can do?

Thank you for listening.

Judy Nielsen                                                                                                                                               Elementary Music Specialist                                                                                                                                       Beaverton School District

Response to the June 18th School Board Meeting

We were disappointed that the school board ignored our request to answer two simple questions regarding  alternatives to the disastrous cuts being planned for music, PE, and library/media. Please note that these questions were *not* just asked verbally in the meeting, but rather submitted in writing the weekend before.  Any one of these alternatives would have balanced the budget while saving high-quality, comprehensive education for 38,000 students in the Beaverton School District.

The alternatives are: 1)  Do not add NEW programs and 2) INCREASE furlough days.

Alternative #1: NEW Programs
The district plans to add 19.9 NEW instructional assistants (NOT licensed teachers, but classified staff) to supervise technology “class.”  The IAs do not hold a teaching license, so they will not be allowed to introduce any new information, but only supervise the students during their time in the computer lab.  The district also plans to add 32.5 RTI (Response to Intervention) positions.  These are certified teachers who spend some of their time working with small groups of students who need extra help, then spend the other part of their time leading collaboration efforts amongst classroom teachers.  RTI was implemented over the past two years using federal stimulus funds.  Those funds have since dried up.  We believe RTI is an unproven program that should not be sustained given the current budget shortfall and the cost to other programs—namely losing 1/3 of our music program, 1/3 of PE, and ALL teacher-librarians K-12.  The price tag for these new tech and RTI positions: $4.75M.

Alternative #2: Furlough Days
The district surveyed the community in a series of budget teaching sessions this past February.  Both staff and parents were overwhelmingly in favor of 10 furlough days (cutting days from the school year to cut costs) to balance the budget.  However, for some reason as yet unknown, the district ignored the input it claimed to have sought, and the furlough days negotiated with the teacher’s union amounted to only 5.  Once this contract was ratified, the school board claims they had no option to add more days—the contract was binding.  At the time of the vote, however, teachers did not have all of the information about program allocations yet.  They were informed that a veto to the contract would mean reverting back to a standard contract, losing all 5 negotiated furlough days and laying off even more teachers.  We believe the negotiation and ratification process was negligent and coercive.  We believe that teachers, now that they know the program cuts that are being planned, would gladly vote for more furlough days to save programs for students and reduce class size.  It is our understanding that contracts can be renegotiated if both sides agree to do so.  Our request was that the board simply ask the BEA if they would consider a renegotiation to add furlough days.  This could be done by putting out an official survey to certified teachers including all relevant information.  Each additional furlough day would save the district approximately $1.2M.  One furlough day could bring back all of the 18 music teachers the district plans to cut.  An additional 3 could bring back library/media specialists and another 1 furlough day could bring back PE.

The district and the board are hiding behind the outcome of BEA negotiations, saying their hands are tied because the contract has already been ratified.  They also transfer blame to the state legislature for underfunding us and to the voters for not passing the local option levy in November, 2011.  To us, the message is clear: unproven programs are being favored over proven ones.  The district is using these budget cuts as an excuse to implement pet projects.  They lean heavily on computers and cheap labor rather than comprehensive education for the whole child.  The district and the board are showing that they would rather have collaboration time for classroom teachers than music, PE, and library for students.  Collaboration is an unproven program, the latest educational fad, just like CIM and CAM.  Music, PE, and library are staples of comprehensive education.  The programs that are being cut will take years to replace.  The educational opportunities missed by students this coming year can never be replaced.  There are stories everywhere about how music class saved students from life-threatening depression or helped motivate them to attend school and graduate.  But no alumni will ever come back and say, “If it weren’t for those PLC’s (professional learning communities), I never would have made it to graduation.”

The meeting last night appeared to be engineered by the district so that we would not be heard during the public participation portion of the meeting — our microphones were turned off, and the timers gave us only 90 seconds instead of our full two minutes at the microphone.  After several of us had statements cut short, we had to ask the district to honor our full time.  It was just one more example of the reality that the district and board don’t really want to hear what we have to say, and are afraid to let it be heard and possibly broadcast.  Throughout this process, the public was not given enough opportunity to contribute.  The district only held one listening session instead of the usual three.  When we did faithfully participate, our comments and feedback were ignored.  The board rubber-stamped the budget as delivered by the district.

Below are the two questions (cited above) that we submitted to the board:

• Dear Board Member, When you voted, did you know your vote FOR the budget was a vote for NEW positions that would be funded in part by making significant cuts to existing, proven programs such as music, PE, and library?

• Dear Board Member, When you voted, did you know that the extra furlough days had not been negotiated for with specific intent to avoid damage to proven programs such as music, PE, and library?

We believe the district’s presentation of the budget this spring failed to inform the Board of significant increases which drove deep cuts to important programs, and the Board approved a budget without knowing its details.

Our group will continue to work to advance music education in the Beaverton School District.  Our goal is to have music funded to meet national minimums for seat time: 90 min per week grades K-5, and 3 hours per week for band and choir grades 6-12.

As a follow-up to my June 6 letter to the Board, I wish to address several of the issues, and ask that the Board respond to all of the people who are asking questions.

Who is to blame?

At the last Board meeting on June 4, it was implied that we parents can change things in Salem.  Ultimately, that may be true, and I vote in favor of education every time.  However, at the local level you do have choices on how to spend the District money.  As elected representatives please spend those dollars the way the constituency wants.  Many others tonight will reiterate how we think the moneys should be spent. 

Innovations over Preservation?

Why is the District approving new positions in intervention and Technology instruction instead of preserving the existing teachers we have?  You don’t have to do this.  Where is the advocacy and demand from parents for these things?  It wasn’t in the community listening sessions.

Not every school needs “collaboration” sessions.  Parents and students overwhelmingly voted against a very similar program in 2010 and you can expect an even larger outcry about the tradeoffs this time around.

This district already has spread itself too thin with too many “special programs” aimed to reach those kids outside of the 85^th percentile or both margins of the bell curve.  Why not do something to preserve the programs for the vast majority of the population. Such as preserving music, classroom sizes and librarians.

Flawed Community Involvement Process

Although I was not at every single meeting this past Fall and Spring, I did review a number of the budget committee meeting minutes.  Time and time again there was clearly state frustration that the community involvement process was simply not sufficient.  When you are proposing to cut over 10 % of the budget, and 10% of the current staff, why wasn’t the community made fully aware of this at an earlier stage.  Our HS principal just sent out an email about the site-specific impacts last week!  The message about the gravity of impacts was NEVER made clear until the 11^th hour.

What is the priority in times of Crisis?

The priority in times of crisis should be to preserve what is good, and avoid “extras”.  Intervention, new on-line course, may be nice to have in the future, but they are not worth the cost to classroom sizes and elimination of key educational programs like music.  To be personal, my children will gain nothing from these programs, and they will lose their sense of community with the huge impact to music programs.  I’ve  been to the OMEA Honors Productions five times for my children.  They are achievers in this world.  Intervention will not help them in the least.

Disappointment wasn’t your only option

Through all the emails, information, letters, meeting minutes, it appears you had options.  As daunting as it may seem, you ALWAYS have the option to open dialogue with the Unions – both sides can agree to do so at ANY time.  Why won’t you make a commitment to do so?  These are dire times that take heroic efforts – that’s what you have been elected to do – Be heroes for the children of the Beaverton School District.

Sincerely

Erica Rooney