Music in Schools on the Upbeat

You can hear the evidence from the swelling ranks on the high school practice field after classes end for the day. You can see it in the empty shelves at music stores, sense it from a principal who is scrambling to find a director for the new campus orchestra.

After three decades of decline, the once-proud music programs in California’s public schools are making a comeback at last.

The faint, hopeful stirrings that began a few years ago have yet to reach a crescendo, music education experts say. But the signs are unmistakable--especially with the start of the new school year this month.

At Westchester High School, band director Eric Hankey has watched his corps grow from an anemic 11 members last fall to a respectable 69 this year. To help meet the growing interest, the school’s music department recently received $15,000 in new equipment from a private foundation.

Halfway across Los Angeles County, Arcadia High School’s band director expects to wait for up to 18 months for such large, expensive instruments as bass trombones, so great is the demand.

“We have gone as far as Indiana to purchase instruments,” said band director Tom Landes, who has seen a 20% increase in music programs, now boasting about 600 students, in the last few years at Arcadia High.

And in Beverly Hills, elementary school teachers have pulled mildewed violins, cellos and basses out of storage for refurbishing. When the district reinstated its band program recently, about 200 students signed up, according to Gil Young, arts coordinator for the Beverly Hills Unified School District.

Ron Warner, band director at Alhambra High School, says he has been noticing steady growth in other bands as well as in his own, whose ranks swelled to 90 students from last year’s 75.

“I saw the beginning of the growth three years ago, and I don’t think we have seen a plateau yet,” Warner said. He counts among his blessings the fact that the school board has budgeted $10,000 in each of the last three fiscal years for new instruments.

School officials aren’t the only witnesses to a music education renaissance.

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“Our rentals have tripled this fall over last fall--and we’re not done yet!” said Adam Lerman, owner of Adam’s Music in West Los Angeles.

Johnny Thompson, owner of Johnny Thompson’s Music in Monterey Park, said he has seen a 10% to 15% growth in the sale of instruments.

“Some schools haven’t ordered instruments in years, and all of a sudden they’re ordering,” Thompson said.

Victor Fernandez, owner of the Santa Monica Music Center, said his sales are up about 10% also, with the demand heaviest for violins, clarinets, saxophones, trumpets and flutes.

None of this comes as a surprise to Jay Zorn, president of the California Music Educators’ Assn., who has been watching school districts up and down California gradually add back the programs they dismantled during a long spell of lean budget years throughout the 1980s.

Several factors are at work, Zorn said, including growing evidence that musical literacy improves performance in mathematics and other academic subjects. An improving economy and the resulting increases in school budgets have played a key role, and even Hollywood has done its part.

“ ‘Mr. Holland’s Opus’ helped us,” said Zorn, referring to the 1995 hit movie starring Richard Dreyfuss as an inspired, and inspiring, high school music teacher.

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But the growth is not without its downside: It has produced a shortage of qualified music teachers.

“We have pretty much exhausted” the supply of teachers in California, “and now districts are going elsewhere to fill that need,” said Zorn, who chairs the music education program at USC.

The growth is not across the board, nor is it all attributable to an uptick in music programs in public schools.

Many private schools have steadily added to their music programs, and public school parents have found other ways to look after their children’s music education, at least in more affluent neighborhoods. They simply signed them up for private lessons or had them join youth music programs offered by civic associations to fill the gaps; in some cases, school districts have allowed private instructors to set up shop on campus, offering after-school classes for a fee.

In some districts, including Glendale, Long Beach, Burbank and the Palos Verdes Peninsula, community support allowed music programs to keep going despite public school funding cutbacks in the wake of Proposition 13, the landmark property-tax-slashing measure approved by state voters in 1978. Parents and business and community leaders in Glendale and the Palos Verdes area formed education foundations to raise funds for music programs and teachers.

In Long Beach, school officials were able to maintain a strong music program all along, but increased interest has prompted a surge of youngsters in middle school music programs, a district spokesman said. In the elementary schools, fourth- and fifth-graders will give six concerts this year, up from four last year, he added.

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For those who rent or sell instruments in such communities, it’s business as usual--busy.

“Fall is always busy for us, but we’re usually prepared,” said Matt Kanjo, manager of A Muse Palos Verdes, “though we did get caught a little short on trumpets.”

In those districts experiencing a surge in music programs, however, the mood is downright upbeat.

“Our classes are bulging--music is very important to this community,” said Janitta Keck, music coordinator for the Pasadena Unified School District.

In South-Central Los Angeles, a big wave of interest in marching bands has swept campuses.

“We have had an explosion in the last few years of students wanting to get into the band,” said Robert Wearn, dean at Fremont High School. “Being in a band is fun, and offers students structure to their lives.” It also helps keep them off the streets and out of trouble, he added.

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Several other Los Angeles Unified campuses are reporting similar trends, according to Donald Dustin, the district’s director of performing arts. The band increases average about 10%, which he attributes mainly to the district’s growing overall enrollment.

But growth is growth, and in Los Angeles Unified, campus officials are scrambling to make room. Some teachers are dividing band class into two periods, while others are moving their newly swelled ranks to auditoriums and multipurpose rooms.

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Times staff writer Duke Helfand and Times correspondents Joseph Hanania, Michael Krikorian, Joe Mozingo and Kevin O’Leary contributed to this story.