A few Saturdays ago, my family had the pleasure of seeing our 14-year-old daughter, a Pioneer Valley Regional School student, perform for the second year in a row in the Western Massachusetts District Concert Band during a show at UMass. Ironically, my husband and I spent the past couple of weeks leading up to this concert sending emails, attending and speaking up at budget meetings to make sure that the PVRS School Committee would not cut the program that created the opportunity for seven PVRS band students to participate in these performances.
What I feel most frustrated by, and angry about, is that we are having to have these conversations about possible cuts to our already stripped down budget at all. While I have in the past appreciated the need for fewer teachers/staff due to shrinking enrollment, I struggle mightily with the possibility of any further cuts that will alter and diminish this school system. For example, at the recent school board budget hearing, one school board member and a principal were debating the need for funds to both repair books (by the way, there have been no specific funds at Northfield Elementary School for new books for several years) or buy medicine, like Tylenol, for the nurse’s supplies. This is how tight the budget is currently.
Further cuts will negatively affect our children’s education, along with limiting their ability to have experiences beyond the standard classroom curriculum. I feel any cuts, whether it be more teachers, staff, the sports program, the theater/art/music/band program, the library or the whatever to the PVRS budget would be intolerable for the health of these schools. I could easily talk about the fallout that comes with cutting any of these so called “extras” but for the sake of discussion, let’s focus on the band program that was recently up for dissolution.
The band program, along with the music, theater and visual arts programs in the PVRS regional school system, are a primary reason that our schools have remained a great place to send our children, despite the recent significant budget cuts. Our daughter’s accomplishment, along with six other PVRS students who auditioned and qualified for the Western Massachusetts District Concert Band, is largely due to learning to read music early. This program, led by the remarkable Lynette Snedeker, has allowed children in Bernardston, Northfield, Warwick and Leyden to engage with music in a deeply meaningful way that has a ripple effect. Because the students learn to read music early, they come into the middle school ready to perform and develop even further as musicians. This investment in music helps create a program, led by Tim Burns, that now numbers almost one in four students playing an instrument at PVRS and over eighty students between the two bands. This demonstrates the value of this early investment.
The PVRS band program at the elementary school level, unique to these four towns, is wholly why the high school band is able to have the success it does. For example, the Pioneer Band annually attends the Massachusetts Instrumental & Choral Conductors Association (MICCA) Concert and Choral Festival, which they did this past Saturday. This is an opportunity for the band to perform and be adjudicated by a panel of national music directors and conductors who offer advice and feedback to improve students’ performance. The PVRS band for the past several years has received bronze or silver awards, including Saturday’s performances which resulted with the middle school receiving a bronze rating and the high school receiving a silver. This is a significant accomplishment for such a small rural regional school.
As some people may be aware, the band, which is both a marching and a concert band, performs in Franklin County parades throughout the year, including at the Orange Harvest Parade because its own high school does not have a marching band anymore. The middle and high school bands present a winter and spring concert, perform annually for senior citizens and invites the elementary schools over so that the younger students can see what opportunities lie ahead if they continue in band. Every other year, the high school band has been invited to perform at a national venue, like Washington D.C. this year, for further adjudication, learning, musical growth and performance opportunities. Obviously, without that early introduction to reading music and working together as a band at the elementary school level, the high school band would quickly shrink and then eventually die.
At this same aforementioned public hearing to discuss the PVRS budget, a select board member from Bernardston announced that communities and taxpayer dollars cannot be all about the schools. I feel exactly the opposite. Taxpayer dollars should be primarily all about the schools. I also believe, hopefully not too optimistically, that most citizens who live in these small towns agree with me and want to continue to support the great work of students, teachers and staff at PVRS.
I see the range of ages of people who attend events in these communities, from cheering on the PVRS basketball teams to packing the elementary school gyms for the winter and spring music concerts, to attending the lunch band concert for seniors at PVRS to the filled seats at the recent outstanding performances of “The Phantom of the Opera.” I challenge this belief that retired citizens and people who don’t have children in the school system don’t want to support the school. I have seen these people at all of these events.
I have seen the generosity of the Bernardston and Northfield Kiwanis Clubs with fundraising efforts to support the upcoming high school band programs trip to Washington. I have seen the outpouring of financial support from people who attend various fundraisers for the school, and have heard people of all ages talk about their deep affection for PVRS. I was delighted and heartened to see so many interested and engaged parents at the recent School Board budget committee meeting who were worried about cuts to the band and art programs. I know that most citizens want PVRS to continue to be a great school. All of this takes money, public will, speaking up and showing up at town meeting in May to vote.
I would like to challenge all of you who read this to really look at what is important to you in a community and to think beyond the increase in your taxes to what a healthy school budget will require. I want you to spend time thinking about how we all benefit from a good public school system that is strong and robust with opportunities for all students to achieve and thrive.
I encourage you all to speak to your selectboard and finance committee members in support of the school budget. If we do not make the school budget the most important investment of our tax payer dollars, I can guarantee that the health of our schools and children will suffer, programs will shrink or disappear over time, and so will our towns.
The number one reason people move to a community, according to longtime Realtor Pam Veith, is for the quality of the schools. We all know people have choices about where they send their children, so it is important to make sure that PVRS remains a very good option.
We need to increase our taxes to meet the needs of the school. People may not like this but as we have seen, more cutting to an already skeletal budget will damage PVRS’s ability to keep its wonderful programs and reputation and, as we know, once something is cut, it is doubly hard to bring it back. Public schools and the students who attend them are always worthy of investment.
Deborah A. Potee of Northfield is a social worker and therapist. She works at the Amherst College Counseling Center and is the parent of 5th grade trumpet player at NES and 9th grade clarinet player at PVRS.