Saving Greater Victoria school music program 'a harder fight than it needed to be,' parents say

Families in the Greater Victoria School District (SD61) are celebrating after fundraising efforts saved the district's elementary school strings music program from being cut next year.

With the school district facing a $7.2-million deficit in its upcoming budget, SD61 had planned to cut the program, but parents and community members raised the $208,000 required to save the program from being lost.

The school board accepted the funds after much debate on Monday evening.

"We're very excited," said Karin Kwan, chair of the group Advocacy for Music in Schools (AMIS).

Kwan has four children, and all of them grew up learning music to varying degrees within the school district.

The local parent says that music programs help with brain development, and help kids find a safe place socially, especially when they're young.

Kwan says one of her daughters struggles with anxiety, and that music is a calming outlet for her.

"When she finds she's struggling with school work, she'll put her school work down and she'll pick up her violin or flute and that's really what grounds her and let's her come back to whatever she's doing," said Kwan.

SCHOOL BOARD VOTE

Kwan says that even after the $208,000 was raised by the community – in roughly three weeks – the school board still needed time to deliberate.

"Unfortunately it was a harder fight than it needed to be," she told CTV News on Tuesday.

"What we did is we kept telling the board, 'We can raise this money,' but they kept saying no. So what happened is we raised the money and made it impossible to say no," said Kwan.

At the end of Monday's meeting, five of the seven currently active school trustees voted in favour of accepting the funding and continuing the elementary school strings program.

Kwan says she thinks some of the school board's hesitation stemmed from the board being uncomfortable with accepting private donations to fund a public program.

She added that the elementary strings program is only offered at 16 of the school district's 28 elementary schools.

Part of accepting the funding means that the music program must be offered at all elementary schools, though individual schools can decide if there's enough interest in it from their students.

Students are seen rallying for Greater Victoria School District music programs in spring 2022. (CTV News)

'RELIEVED BUT IN DISBELIEF'

Local father Dan del Villano says he's happy the program has been saved, but that he's surprised it took so much effort from the community.

"We brought $200,000 to them to save a program that parents and teachers and students love, and they had to think about it," he said.

"In the end, two of the trustees still voted against it."

He says he doesn’t feel like the voices of parents were truly heard at Monday's meeting, and that he's "relieved but in disbelief" about the decision.

"If the board cuts the roots, they kill the tree," he said. "They have to save the music program."

Kwan and del Villano say it's a constant effort to make sure that the school district doesn’t cut music programs.

Kwan says some solutions to the struggle would be to mandate music programs as part of public school curriculum and to increase funding to B.C.'s public education system in general.

She says over the past few years, added costs like B.C.'s employer health tax and increases to employee insurance have been pushed onto B.C.'s education system without equal raises in funding.

"There's a funding problem for sure," said Kwan. "We need to look at the amount of money that's going into education." 

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