A Washington school district’s decision to cut a music program was blasted as “par for the course” by parents as the decision was defended in the name of combatting “entrenched…white supremacy culture.”
(Video: Fox News)
Failing to heed the lesson of “go woke, go broke,” board members for the Olympia School District in the state of Washington met earlier this month to discuss cuts for their 12 schools to account for a reported $11.5 million budget shortfall. Speaking at the April 13 meeting, School Board Director Scott Clifthorne explained why “exclusionary” band and orchestra for fourth-grade students had gotten the axe.
“We’re a school district that lives in and is entrenched in and is surrounded by white supremacy culture. And that’s a real thing,” he argued.
“We also know that there are other folks in the community that experience things like a tradition of excellence as exclusionary,” the director had said.
Joining “Fox & Friends First” on Tuesday, district resident and concerned mother of three Alesha Perkins voiced her opposition to the move and expressed the frustration that is driving families away.
“We have reached a level of absurdity in our school district, among our school board and our leadership that is just hard to ignore at this point,” she said calling it “par for the course.”
“The director of elementary education stated that not only is the program inequitable, but when she heard the word ‘tradition of excellence,’ which was used to describe our music programs, she said that the word ‘tradition’ actually translated, to her, to mean systemic discrimination,” Perkins detailed.
A spokesperson for the district told the New York Post “It is having a disparate impact across our schools on students who choose to participate in band and strings and those who choose not to. The ‘opportunity’ offered to all forces choices between things like lunch, recess or intervention time and this ‘opportunity’ disrupts our teachers’ ability to teach all kids in their classes academic content in an already packed school day.”
Clifthorne went on to contend, “There’s nothing about strings or wind instrumental music that is intrinsically white supremacist. However, the ways in which it is and the ways in which all of our institutions, not just schools — local government, state government, churches or neighborhoods — inculcate and allow white supremacy culture to continue to be propagated and cause significant institutional violence are things that we have to think about carefully as a community.”
“And I think that we have to do that interrogation. And we have to address the ways in which it creates challenges for administering the educational day of our elementary learners while we retain the program,” he added.
However, Perkins lamented, “We are losing students in huge numbers. I’m not talking about a handful of students. I’m talking about hundreds and hundreds of students that are exiting the district, and they are virtually all citing these results. You cannot sustain a school district with a mass exodus of students. I mean, it’s just not sustainable for funding or anything else.”
According to The Olympian, the district had hoped to save $530,000 by cutting fourth and fifth-grade band and orchestra but had agreed to keep the program for fifth grade after pushback at an estimated cost of $350,000.
With two meetings remaining before May 15 and the adoption of the budget, additional cuts are expected to reduce positions at Olympia schools by at least 10, saving roughly $1.4 million. Meanwhile, the district that had previously come under fire for having a club that excluded white students noted that their budget depends entirely on the legislation passing the state House and Senate.
Native of Brooklyn, NY, Kevin Haggerty is a graduate of Hunter College where he studied Cultural Anthropology and Geography. An avid reader and truth seeker, he currently resides in Texas with his wife and their dog and, when he isn't researching current events and their impacts, you'll find him spending time with friends and family or working on his next novel.
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