By STEPHEN FRAGANO
COLUMNIST
Like all public school districts, the school district in my hometown of Mahopac, NY, must have a budget every year. If the budget passes, everything is great; if it does not, there are widespread layoffs and all of the programs in the school district are at risk of being affected…that is, most programs are.
Every time that the budget is in danger of not passing, one of the programs that is practically always threatened is the music department. Usually, funding would be decreased, and the department would have to do more with less. This time, however, the music department is in danger of being terminated, as band, orchestra and choral teachers will be laid off.
This comes as a shock to many because the three main ensembles (band, orchestra and chorus) have all at least doubled and tripled in size under the direction of the existing teachers, and the quality of performances over the past several years has increased tremendously. Some teachers in the other departments and disciplines also face termination, but no other department faces the magnitude of change the music department is forced to tackle.
Let me now say that I am a big advocate of school sports and other physical fitness activities. Sports are a huge part of any school, and they unify a school for a common purpose. Sports teams are practically never under-funded or threatened to be cut by the school district, however. Equipment that must be bought for sports teams is no cheaper than equipment for other departments, yet the school has no problem forking over the cash. Last year, the high school replaced its existing turf field, used for football, soccer and lacrosse games, for a fee of close to $1,000,000.
As said before, I enjoy sports, and I am involved in them, but it does not seem fair for one aspect of a school’s identity to overshadow another. It is as if the school blatantly says that music and other performing arts are just not as important to the school and to society in general.
It begs the question: Do schools and society hold a hierarchy for certain disciplines and fields? In my opinion, there is most certainly a psychological hierarchy: sports, for instance, play a significant role in American society. Baseball and football players are paid millions upon millions of dollars for what they do. Meanwhile, the president of the United States, arguably the most powerful position in the world, is paid less than half a million dollars for his duties. No matter how much I love sports, I refuse to believe that either Tom Brady or David Wright does more influential things than Barack Obama, love him or hate him.
Sometimes I just think society’s priorities are out of whack, and this psychological hierarchy of importance we give certain facets of life is downright problematic.
