Funding
Budget: Please click here to go to our Principal’s Guide and read about creating your instrumental music program budget Budget Cuts: When a school district is faced with budget cuts, music and the arts tend to be the first programs that administrators cut back on. This is detrimental to the students and to the success of each and every school that is affected. There are many ways to combat these cuts and save your music program. When budget cuts come, it is important to advocate for an equal cut across all school programs rather than a targeted cut on one or a few programs. For example, rather than cutting a music program, every program across the curriculum takes a 5% cut so that the cut does not affect one group of students in a large capacity but rather all students in a small amount. FTE – Full Time Equivalent When facing budget cuts, one of the best arguments to save a music program is to understand and discuss the Full Time Equivalent (FTE) issue, which looks at teacher/student ratio. Music teachers typically teach more students each day than other subject teachers. If their position is cut, the students who were involved in the music program will have to go somewhere else. Based on simple math, the decision to cut a music teacher position will cost more than to keep their position in place. Check out these articles on FTE: