by Garrett Receveur

A teacher leads a line of elementary school students down the hallway. As the students walk down the hallway to the music room, they see that the library doors are open. They take a brief peek into the room and see the librarian reading to a group of kindergarteners.

“I do not like green eggs and ham,” the librarian said in the character voices she was famous for. “I do not like them Sam I am.”

The students walk on, still in a single-file line, until they reach the music room. As soon as the students enter, they see their music teacher hastily setting up maracas across the room.

This eccentric music teacher picks up a sombrero and urges the students to pick up maracas and start shaking them. She tells them to shake them in a quarter note rhythm and then an eighth note rhythm.

These students are in no way composing symphonies or analyzing concertos, but music classes at the elementary school level are an essential part of a student’s growth. The same could be said for art classes, physical education classes, and time in the library.

When I was in elementary school, I never really liked P.E. Yes, I liked running around and letting all the energy I had loose, but I never really looked forward to P.E. day.

Art was more of the same. In elementary school, I despised art, mostly because I was not very good at it. Even now, my art skills are crude at best. Every fish I draw looks like a bird, and every turkey I draw looks like a dinosaur. Therefore, it’s safe to say that I despised art class in elementary school and, consequently, in middle school.

Music class was not something I immensely looked forward to either. I loved the percussion instruments, but that was just about it. Yes, elementary school music did steer me into joining the band in middle and high school, but music in elementary school was just a bit boring for me.

However, my absolute favorite part of elementary school was the days when our class would go down to the library. I would look all over the shelves for something I would want to read. Between kindergarten and second grade, it was the Horrible Harry book series. After that, it was the Animorphs series, which ultimately inspired me to write fan-fictions and thus get started writing for fun. In middle school, I started checking classic novels out of the library and consequently became better as a writer.

Without the library in elementary school, I would not be the columnist I am today. Without music class, I would not have found the band program and thus have the love for music I have today. Yes, I could have done without art and P.E., but those classes were just as pivotal to someone else as library time and music class was for me.

It is during elementary school that a child begins to discover who they are and what they might be interested in doing later in life. Those years are the formative years of a child’s life, the years when they are the most influenced by other ideas.

These programs used to be well-funded, until last year when the budget cuts started for our school corporation. In the school corporation’s eyes, the only thing that could be done to remedy this situation was the cutting of programs and teachers.

Last year, the NAFCS school board focused on keeping the cuts as far away from the students as possible, forcing the board to shut down four elementary schools. This year, the board is focusing on making cuts on the basis of what is important and what is essential.

It is for this reason that the board is cutting 68.8 teaching positions from the corporation. In the process, certified art, music, and P.E. teachers at the elementary school level are being moved to other buildings, forcing the regular teachers at the school to teach these classes. In addition, the librarian positions at the middle and high school level will be jostled around so much as to be impractical and unrecognizable.

However, art, music, and P.E. teachers will not necessarily lose their jobs; they will instead be moved to the middle and high school levels, assuming they’re certified, and displace less experienced teachers.

Meanwhile, in elementary schools, the regular teachers, who are in no way certified, will teach art, music, and P.E. classes in an effort by the school board to save money.

It takes a special kind of teacher to instill a love for art and music at an early age. That’s all elementary school art and music is for in the first place. Yes, it’s a lot of fun when you attempt to play a xylophone or paint a landscape, but these classes are more about loving what you do than mastering what you do.
Without certified art and music specialists at the elementary school level, I fear that these classes will become monotonous and thus not as enjoyable for the students.

I attended the school board meeting where they voted on this decision and further discussed it. Before the vote, people from the public could walk up to a podium and speak directly to the school board.

FC students and NAHS theater director David Longest all gave impassioned speeches about why we need art and music programs to be taught by art and music teachers. As such, I think FC graduate Amber Schultz put it best when she said, “Who can really expect math and science teachers to effectively teach the arts?”

At the meeting, before the public came up to speak, school board president Roger Whaley made clear that these speakers would have to offer solutions to the problem instead of just pleading that their program not be cut.

In an ideal world, that solution would be an easy one: raise taxes. Cutting spending and raising taxes are the only way that any budget crisis can be solved.

This, however, is not an ideal world. If a politician raises taxes, it is unlikely that he will ever be elected again. The people of the community have a general disdain for higher taxes and thus will not pay them.

However, if the school board does decide to raise taxes to remedy the budget crisis, it will not go towards a new and expensive desk in Dr. Bruce Hibbard’s office. The increased revenue will, instead, be used to allow teachers in the school corporation to keep their jobs and will keep certain programs afloat in the current turbulent economic waters.

These programs, particularly elementary art and music, are essential for a child’s growth and development. Take away teachers certified to teach these classes and you are risking a child’s future. Is a child’s future really something to toy with?

No, of course not. By playing with their future, you are forcing that child into a certain niche without letting them dabble in certain other opportunities, which is the cornerstone of any great education.

At the orchestra pops concert last Thursday night, orchestra director Doug Elmore gave a passionate speech in favor of the arts. He concluded his speech by saying, “I am not a failure, my colleagues are not failures, and these kids are definitely not failures.”

However, when you lessen a child’s opportunities for future success by lowering the impact of art and music, you are basically saying to them, “You’re a failure.” And I know, without a shadow of a doubt, that those kids, the ones most impacted by the loss of art and music teachers, are certainly not failures.