Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My understanding is that this sort of change is based on enrollment. So if people drop band/orchestra/chorus and there are not a certain number of students, they combine.

This is the correct answer. The comments about the salaries of people in central office are inaccurate. Schools receive allocations for teaching positions based on enrollment. If the school’s enrollment drops and kids are not signing up for a particular class, things like this happen. The principal decides where the teaching positions are allocated. If enrollment is low in the band class and they keep staffing the same in that area, it means other classes will have enormously large class sizes.

+1 Also, some principals are more supportive of music than others. They might allocate only enough salary to pay one instrumental music teacher so the school has to combine groups and allocate the savings to another area that the principal believes is more important.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Musical ensembles have the potential to be much larger than regular classes and if the situation warrants it, it makes sense to have many more students in such classes.

But it sounds like in this situation, student learning will be sacrificed greatly-- none of the kids will be consistently constructed at their ability level by mixing levels just for the sake of increasing class size.

In my book, if any of the ensembles has fewer than 35 kids, it would be worth finding some way to combine. But if the average music class is no smaller than the class sizes in other depts, then there's no justification in combining.

The skill level is important or no one learns.

MCPS spends too much on these programs and sports which undermines essential topics like reading, writing and math.

I hardly doubt they are spending that much. How would it undermine essential classes? You think a music teacher can teach calculus?

It's so disappointing that MCPS doesn't give resources or serious attention to the types of academic subjects that make kids well rounded and convey life skills.

The music programs at my kids' schools don't hold a candle to what I experienced through public school back in the day. The speech and debate team is an absolute joke. At our school, at least, newspaper and yearbook are classes rather than extracurricular which makes them inaccessible to most kids who don't want to use a slot in their schedule four years in a row.

Our principal gives equal lips service to the arts and to sports. But the quality of the non-sports subjects is so, so much lower than I would expect.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Musical ensembles have the potential to be much larger than regular classes and if the situation warrants it, it makes sense to have many more students in such classes.

But it sounds like in this situation, student learning will be sacrificed greatly-- none of the kids will be consistently constructed at their ability level by mixing levels just for the sake of increasing class size.

In my book, if any of the ensembles has fewer than 35 kids, it would be worth finding some way to combine. But if the average music class is no smaller than the class sizes in other depts, then there's no justification in combining.

The skill level is important or no one learns.

MCPS spends too much on these programs and sports which undermines essential topics like reading, writing and math.