Several Columbia High School students active in the school’s art and music programs beseeched the South Orange-Maplewood Board of Education at its April 25 meeting not to slash funding to those programs as part of impending budget cuts.
At the conclusion of the meeting, the BOE voted 5-4 to pass a $182M budget that will include the loss of 28 staff positions and overall funding cuts to every department — but it is unclear what positions will be cut. Acting Supt. Dr. Kevin Gilbert said the cuts would be revealed publicly after the BOE’s May 9 reorganization meeting.
“Are there cuts in arts and music?” said BOE member Will Meyer before the BOE voted on the budget. “Yeah, there are, as we discussed, a 35% cut in a couple of areas here. If you look at this budget, it is color coded with changes. It is a sea of red. Unfortunately, arts and music does not pop out because we’ve had to make cuts across the board. … There are a lot of parts of our district that have major cuts.”
“This is a tough decision. I’m not happy to make it,” said Meyer, echoing the comments of many of his colleagues on the BOE.
Earlier in the meeting, many of the students who made public comments credited the district’s arts programming with transforming their educational experiences at CHS.
Senior Hannah Gutnick, who said she chose to attend CHS after years in private school based on its strong arts programming, said, “I am not a particularly strong academic student. I have never really found my passion or felt motivated in that area of education. And when I came here for high school, I felt like I had finally found my place in the crowd.”
This is what we live for,” said CHS sophomore Izzy Sandoval
Izzy Sandoval, a sophomore, said, “What I look forward to every day when I go to school is my music tech class [during] period nine. To be blunt, that is what keeps me motivated.” Sandoval, like Gutnick before her, said that her passions lie outside academics. “The budget cuts would restrict a lot of students from finding that motivation,” Sandoval said. She credited the program with being a valuable source of both social-emotional learning and leadership training. “A restriction on that would be a restriction on one’s personal expansion,” she said. “This is what we live for.”
Sophomore Ella Levy mentioned performing with CHS alumna Lauryn Hill at the Prudential Center as a highlight of her experience in the marching band. “Band is a family,” Levy said, and the cuts would jeopardize the chances of younger students who look up to the high schoolers and who want to be a part of that family from having the opportunity. “We need to think about the future,” Levy said. “When I leave the district, I want to be proud of what I leave behind. And right now, quite frankly, I’m not.”
“No student should be deprived of an experience as special as the one I have had in this district,” said Emmett Simon, who credited participation in marching band, jazz band, and percussion ensemble with cultivating “a passion for music which I would not have had without it.”
Students noted that the programs in which they participated were already, in their minds, underfunded.
Senior Veronica Levesque said that programming relied heavily on fundraising and donated time by teachers. She noted that students had performed on the floor of the CHS auditorium or in other schools entirely after the stage was ruled unsafe, and that the piccolo she plays was donated through fundraising efforts. “Are we really cutting the budget right now?” Levesque asked. “We should not be relying on the outside wealth of our parents to fund this program.”
“What are the specific causes of these budget cuts? And why does nobody seem to know?” asked junior Z Urist, causing the audience to applaud.
Artists thrive at CHS “not because of the efforts of the school, but despite them,” said junior Brendan Delaney. Arts students’ academic futures, Delaney said, “rest square in the palms of this board.”
Some students called into question the district’s purported focus on diversity, equity and inclusion. Lillian Kyle, a sophomore, said that the budget cuts threatened the district’s stated focus on equality. SOMSD, she said, is a place “where kids of all backgrounds…can express themselves and achieve anything. But this is only possible with continued district funding. Without funding, art and music classrooms will filter out” children who cannot afford to participate, Kyle said. “Funding the arts is a class issue, and therefore a race issue as well.”
Bonnie Garcia said, “To me there’s been a problem in [SOMSD] with talking a lot about progression and failing to act upon it. … I think you cannot separate art from Columbia High School. … When you cut the budget of the arts department and potentially cut teachers, you send a message … you undermine the soul of the community.”
Watch the student’s comments here:
