Vista To Keep Music In Schools
Written by admin on March 5, 2010
*clap clap clap*
Vista Unified School District trustees voted Thursday to keep music teachers and health technicians at elementary schools next year, but made more than $500,000 in other budget cuts.
District officials are working to slash $15 million in spending from next year’s budget in response to funding cuts at the state level.
The board voted in January to eliminate the music program, but trustees asked district officials to continue looking for money to pay for it. They found that money by cutting magnet school funding by 10 percent, eliminating some administrative spending, and taking $250,000 from money set aside to pay for benefits for retired employees.
For the last three years, the district’s 10,000 or so students in kindergarten through fifth grade have gotten 30-minute music lessons once every three weeks.
At Thursday’s meeting, Chloe Smith, an eighth-grader at Vista Academy of Visual and Performing Arts, sang an a capella version of “Colors of the Wind” from the film “Pocahontas” to thank the board for retaining the music teachers.
Posted in: Education