Facing the Music : Education: Parents protest a plan to eliminate an instrument program in Camarillo’s elementary and middle schools.

A proposal to eliminate the instrumental music program in Camarillo’s elementary and middle schools has touched off a protest campaign by parents and other residents concerned that fine arts classes in schools generally are being sacrificed because of budget pressures.

The Pleasant Valley School District board of trustees, faced with an $1.8-million budget shortfall for next year, is considering cutting out its instrumental music program, which has more than 800 students in the fourth through eighth grades.

The move would save the district, which has 13 schools, about $59,000.

Reese Copsey, who has three children in Pleasant Valley’s music program and a fourth in the Rio Mesa High School band, is one of the parents fighting to save the program.

“The way one measures a culture is by its art and its music,” Copsey said. But “it’s the first thing to go in our educational system. Our priorities are very short-term.”

“Everyone’s afraid to attack math,” said Ventura Community College music instructor Frank Salazar. But with music, “they’re not just eliminating a subject, they’re eliminating a whole dimension of what education is all about.”

The Pleasant Valley School District eliminated its instrumental music program at least twice before during budget crunches in 1963 and in 1983, said the district’s only full-time music teacher, Emily Vaniman.

After cutting the program in 1983, the district did not reinstate it for three years, Vaniman said.

Other school districts in Ventura County have also shown a tendency to chop into music programs when money gets tight. But if Pleasant Valley enacts its proposed budget, it will be one of the few larger districts in the county offering no instrumental music through the eighth grade.

The Ventura Unified School District stopped offering instrumental music to its elementary school students in the early 1980s after Proposition 13 reduced school funding, Director of Curriculum and Instruction Joanne VanderMolen said. But Ventura students can still learn to play an instrument beginning in sixth grade.

Similarly, although Simi Valley has not offered instrumental music in the lower grades since Proposition 13 went into effect, budget constraints are not affecting its beginning band program for seventh- and eighth-grade students, said Director of Curriculum and Instruction Susan Parks.

The Oxnard Elementary School District considered eliminating all instrumental music next year in response to the state budget crisis, said Administrator of Curriculum and Instructional Services Jeanne Adams. Vocal opposition by the community, however, led to the district keeping the program for seventh- and eighth-graders.

In Camarillo’s elementary school district, the controversy boiled over into a school board meeting last week, when about a dozen people spoke and presented a petition signed by 241 students and 279 parents asking the board to consider instrumental music an important part of education.

Trustee Jan McDonald told the audience that music falls prey to budget reductions because it is one of the few instructional programs that local school boards can control. The state does not mandate music instruction, while it does require science and math.

“Because the state doesn’t mandate it, it can be cut, not that it should be cut,” said Board President Leonard Diamond.

The dozen or so residents who spoke on behalf of the elementary school district’s music program ranged from a college student majoring in music education to a retired engineer who plays in a seniors band. But their voices harmonized into a common theme.

“In the 23 years I’ve lived here it’s like the same song, different verse,” said Annette Okamura, referring to the previous times that the district has eliminated instrumental music during budget crises.

“The first thing to go is music because, ‘How can it be important when it’s so enjoyable?’ ” said Okamura, who runs a private, after-school arts program for children. “Just maybe what’s needed here is a new way of looking at the music program.”

Research is beginning to show that studying the fine arts improves a student’s overall development, Okamura said. A recent study showed that 40% of high school students who win scholarships have had three years of music or art in high school, she said.

Joseph Walkers, a retired engineer who plays trombone with the Camarillo Seniors Band, said “I’ve been on both sides--the intellectual and the artistic--and I think there should be a better balance between the two sides of the brain.”

Vaniman, whose own career mirrors the ups and downs of Pleasant Valley’s music program, told the council that playing an instrument can enhance the self-confidence and self-esteem of students of all levels of abilities, including the learning disabled.

She also told the board that parents and students who invest time and money in instrumental music “should have the confidence it will be continuous and not an in-and-out program.”

After the public comments, the board voted to study the issue more and asked Supt. Shirley Carpenter to set up a task force to explore increasing community and business involvement in supporting the program.

The board is scheduled to vote on its tentative budget next week and plans to adopt a final budget by September.