History

It took from 1983, when the K-5 general music program was eliminated, until 2006 to make some progress and reinstate credentialed music instruction for all 3rd through 5th graders.  K-2 students are still dependent on whatever programs PTA's can fund.

The Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District has one of the finest public school music programs in the state and the nation. Various high school bands, choirs, and orchestras have performed in Disney Hall and Carnegie Hall, as well as traveling to London, Vienna, Prague, Budapest, Athens, and Shanghai.

The foundation of this fabulous music program is Elementary Music.

For decades, SMMUSD provided general music instruction for grades K-5, and instrumental music and choir for 4th and 5th graders as electives. In 1983, after the passage of Prop 13, funding for the K-5 general music and the choirs was discontinued, and only the elective 4th and 5th grade instrumental music program remained. Parents collected over 1500 petition signatures to save the programs, but to no avail.

About 1,000 students participated in elective instrumental music classes, and the program used a "pull-out schedule" where a different group of students would leave the classroom every 40 minutes for flute class, clarinet class, violin class, etc. Scheduling was very difficult.

In 1997, after much urging from parents, teachers, and community members, the Board of Education created an Advisory Committee for the Visual and Performing Arts (the VAPA DAC). The Committee urged the Board, in its annual reports, to reinstate elementary general music and choir.

Some elementary school PTA's were hiring non-credentialed music teachers (not all of whom were trained as music teachers), and some schools couldn't afford to hire music teachers. There was no equity between schools and no consistent, sequential instructional program across the district, even though music is supposed to be a part of core curriculum.

In 2005, the Board of Education unanimously adopted the "Arts for All" 9-year-strategic plan. That is the stated goal for students in this district: "Arts for All," not just "Arts for Some."

Only 3.7% of the district's current budget goes to fund Visual and Performing Arts programs (Dance, Music, Theatre, and Visual Arts), up a mere 0.3% since the "Arts for All" plan was adopted four years ago.

Finally, in 2006 the Governor proposed an Arts Initiative, which the legislature passed. This resulted in ongoing state Arts Block Grants to the schools. SMMUSD began to receive sufficient funding annually to allow the VAPA Coordinator the VAPA Coordinator, Tom Whaley, to hire additional credentialed teachers to teach music to all 2,500 3rd, 4th, and 5th graders in the district! About 3/4 of the funding now comes from Measure R (passed locally in February 2008) and about 1/4 from the Arts Block grant.

All 3rd grade classes began to receive General Music instruction once a week (singing, music appreciation, and learning to play the recorder and read music, as preparation for choir and instrumental music).

All 4th and 5th graders get to choose between (a) singing in a choir or (b) learning to play a string instrument (violin or cello) or a wind instrument (flute, clarinet, trumpet, or trombone). The VAPA Coordinator developed a "music block" schedule by which four or five music teachers go to each school together, and they teach all the 4th graders at the same time, and then all the 5th graders at the same time.

The "music block" schedule has replaced the former "pull-out" music schedule, in which a different group of 4th and 5th grade students would leave the classroom every 40 minutes for their instrumental music class (first the flute players, then the clarinet players, etc.) Classroom teachers and principals prefer the "music block schedule."  

It takes 10 music teachers to cover all 11 elementary schools in Santa Monica and Malibu, and the schedule is very complicated, with most teachers traveling to three schools a day in order to make the "music block" schedule work. 

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