Elora Public School parents, students and supporters aren’t giving up on the school’s music program, which is at risk because of a projected decrease in the school’s student population.
On May 3, parent council chair Lianne Carter Ladner made her case to the Upper Grand District School Board trustees during a program committee meeting.
“We are a school with a long history of above-average music programming and we exist within a very strong arts community, where music is celebrated and encouraged,” she said. “… Students, parents, friends and members of the community … want to preserve that quality of music the school has had since it opened its doors.”
Ladner said the community has invested about $24,500 into the music program to date.
“We have instrument instruction for all students, plus there’s an extra curricular program for instruments and that includes a junior band, a concert band, Elora Voice Choir and School of Rock – so that’s an extra 140 kids on top of the curriculum students that get instruction,” she said.
Members of the community are concerned about what will happen to their investment as well as students’ well being if the school no longer has an instructor qualified to teach all the musical instruments, Ladner said.
The school’s current music teacher, Kelly Stronach, is at risk of being sent to a different school if enrolment at Elora Public School decreases because she is low on the board’s seniority list, Ladner explained.
According to the Elementary Teacher’s Federation of Ontario collective agreement, teacher placement is based on seniority within the board.
Recent reports indicate student occupancy is predicted to decrease for the 2016-17 school year at Elora Public School, meaning four teachers are potentially leaving, Ladner said – but not without a fight.
Grade 7 students Quinn Caplice, Jamie Weaver and Luke May are also battling to keep Stronach at the school. They have created an online petition to show support for their teacher, which can be accessed at http://tinyurl.com/zvy5o59. The petition had 335 signatures as of May 10.
In an effort to show trustees how important quality music instruction is to students, Ladner outlined some benefits such as:
– heightened emotional development;
– self discipline;
– higher self esteem;
– better skills to cope with anxiety;
– better memory function and problem solving skills; and
– improvement in all school work.
“Students feel … the sense of achievement, accomplishment, pride, they stay engaged in school and very importantly there’s an increased graduation among those students,” Ladner said.
“Especially for kids who maybe are not athletic or maybe don’t exceed in the academic sense, this music provides that opportunity for acceptance and inclusion and it can fight stress.”
On May 4 (the day after the school board meeting), students demonstrated their musical talent and skill in a school-wide music showcase.
In order to maintain the standard of instruction at the school Ladner asked trustees to consider a “short-term gap measure” until the school’s population increases enough to justify the additional teachers.
“According to future estimated enrolment projections for Elora Public School, we are expected to have enrolment increases over the next two years so we would hate to lose our high-calibre music program in the short term if there’s a longer term sort of picture we could take,” Ladner said.
Another suggestion was to create an additional class at the Grade 6, 7 and 8 levels so classes would be less crowded but still within the enrolment limits and an additional teacher would stay at the school.
Ladner also suggested special permission to add a class to the primary level.
“Our primary division is about five students away from requiring an additional teacher allocation and we would ask that one additional teacher be allocated there for the short term,” she said.
If both Ladner’s suggestions are met, Stronach would likely be able to stay at the school. However, Ladner also offered another alternative.
“We would ask for board approval … (of) an enhanced extra curricular music program so that regardless of the qualification of the teacher that would be teaching it, our students could still have the high quality music instruction with instruments,” she said. “We would suggest that we hire local musicians to come in three to five days a week during lunch and at certain times of the year, also after school, to actually teach band instruction.”
The cost would be about $26,650, she added.
School board chair Mark Bailey said having instruction brought to the school was a good idea and suggested a creative alternative.
“If there are high school students, for example, who are looking for their service hours that might be a good opportunity too, especially students who may have come from, graduated Elora Public to return and provide their service hours in giving back to the school community through their music instruction which would be, in my opinion, a mutually beneficial relationship,” he said.
Trustee Linda Busuttil suggested Ladner look into the learning choices committee and getting Elora Public School classified as a magnet or theme-based school with a focus on arts, music and performance.
“As I was reading your document … it’s a reflection of community. I can feel the energy coming off the page and the passion coming off the page from the parents and the community and the school,” Busuttil said.
Program committee chair and school board trustee Susan Moziar said the board can’t make a decision because of the collective bargaining.
“I think we have to wait a little closer to probably the beginning of the year,” she said.
