Parents band together to save music program

A letter bemoaning the loss of PS 24’s only two music teachers has collected about 60 signatures from parents at the school and ten from others in the community.

Eugenia Zakharov, a member of PS 24’s School Leadership Team, said she and about a dozen parents drafted the letter as a way to convey concerns about administrators eliminating the school’s music department starting next fall by cutting one vocal and one instrument teacher. 

Ms. Zakharov, who has twins going into fourth grade at PS 24, said her main concern is that if there’s no music teacher on staff by September, non-profits that help provide music lessons at PS 24 will yank the sheet music, literature and instruments they’ve donated. She said she contacted Music and the Brain, which facilitates a keyboarding program at PS 24, and VH1’s Save the Music, which helps run instrumental classes at the school, and both organizations said grant terms would prevent them from leaving donated goods at PS 24.

“They’re actually looking forward to the instrumental music program that starts in fourth grade,” she said of her twins. “I have an older son who is going into ninth grade. He was part of an instrumental program where he started to play clarinet at PS 24 ... Music is just like math. It helps you with larger thinking, study habits, logical reasoning ...” she said.

The note begins with the tag line, “Please help save the Music Department at P.S. 24 in the Bronx!.” It explains the fact that PS 24 has cut two “conservatory-trained music teachers,” which it plans to replace with visiting enrichment programs that the parents contend “cannot substitute for proper and consistent music instruction which is essential to young children.” The letter complains that programs such as conflict resolution, theater and library “to name a few” were not affected by the school’s budgetary pinch. 

It concludes with references to music educational benefits by summarizing a Nature Neuroscience study that found that, “students in high quality music education programs score 20 percent better on standardized tests than students in school with lower quality music programs, regardless of their socioeconomic level.”

PS 24 announced in June that it had to excess three teachers — meaning they wouldn’t have a teaching gig at PS 24 but would remain employed and paid by the DOE — after three instructors away on long-term leave unexpectedly decided to return this fall. 

Assistant Principal Manny Verdi previously said the returning staff’s contracts guaranteed their spots on the roster. The administration decided to cut a kindergarten teacher who had been hired to alleviate a jump in enrollment one year. Removing the two music instructors with arts teaching licenses allowed the school to avoid excessing classroom staff, according to Mr. Verdi who said contract rules require schools to begin cutting the most junior teachers within each license. Both music teachers had an arts license, which is different from the license classroom instructors have.

However, some PS 24 families and parents, including Penny Prince, would like to see an alternative solution. A Lehman College music education professor for 12 years, Ms. Prince said at the “very least” PS 24 should keep one of the music instructors. She said she knows her two grandchildren at PS 24 will not receive a complete education without the vocal and instrument instructors she helped train at Lehman.

“It’s not just a matter of enjoyment ... It’s a chance to express oneself, to release tension when you’ve been in a classroom all day, and you’re getting ready for these high stakes math and reading tests,” Ms. Prince said. 

Parents began collecting signatures last week, according to Ms. Zakharov, and sent their petition to the PS 24 administration, Schools Chancellor Dennis Walcott, Assemblyman Jeffrey Dinowitz, state Sen. Jeffrey Klein, Councilman Oliver Koppell, Department of Education officials and members of the media Tuesday.