The Willow Glen Resident

Photograph by Skye Dunlap

Key Player: Kathryn Donovan will teach band and choir at Willow Glen Educational Park as part of the schools' new music program.

Education Park's halls come alive with the sound of music

Band, choir and music-appreciation classes are set to begin on Jan. 26

By Cecily Barnes

After 10 years of quiet, the halls at Willow Glen Educational Park will soon be alive with blasting horns, tweeting flutes, off-key clarinets and students' voices raised in song. Welcome back to the music program, after a long hiatus.

"We're very, very happy," said Patrick Day, the principal at Willow Glen High School. "Starting Jan. 26 we'll be offering five periods of music for the middle school and high school."

The new music program is the largest the school has seen in more than 10 years.

Music teacher Kathryn Donovan will offer band and choir at both the middle and high schools, as well as a music-appreciation class at the high school.

"It's kind of a historical music class, with listening and analyzing music," Donovan said. "We're going to be looking at and listening to music from the Middle Ages all the way to the music the kids listen to today."

Instruments that will be taught include flute, horn, clarinet, piano and guitar. Students are excited to finally have the option of learning an instrument or participating in the choir.

"I'm going to take choir because I want to be a theater arts minor in college," 18-year-old Christina Mendoza said. "I think not having a music program deprives people of being well-rounded. It didn't cross my mind in the beginning, but once I became involved in drama, the musicals became harder without a music program."

Parents, too, are thrilled that their kids will be learning music in addition to academics.

"We're finally going to be able to bring more art to our kids," said Carla Fugashima, president of the Willow Glen High School Parents' Club. "Music is one of the things that helps with school spirit. We have to find ways to motivate the kids to be at school. For some kids it's sports, for others it's academics and for others it's music. We're all very excited about it."

Twenty years ago, Willow Glen High School had a full-blown music program with a resounding band, a packed choir and a host of other music classes. The program began a slow decline in 1979, when Proposition 13 significantly cut funding to the schools.

"After Proposition 13, there was a major crunch and the elective programs got severely cut, particularly the arts programs," said Bill Erlendson, San Jose Unified's director of external programs and community development. "To try to preserve the arts programs, the district developed the magnet schools program, with the idea that kids who wanted to study music could go to the magnet schools."

And for a while after Prop. 13, many of the middle and high schools continued a pared-down music program. San Jose Unified prioritized by grade level, phasing music programs out of the elementary schools first and allowing them to continue in the upper grades. However, without the elementary music programs to get kids excited, interest in the middle and high school programs slowly diminished.

"You have to have an elementary program to have a middle and high school program," Erlendson said. "As the numbers dwindled at the high school and middle school level, the programs were cut. It was a slow-death process."

Now the program is back, though not as strong as it once was. Both principals at the Educational Park are excited to expand their curricula to include more arts education. Laird and Day managed to fund the program through creative use of their federal desegregation funds.

"The high school is growing student-wise and ended up with some extra funding. Our portion has been waiting, and Patrick called and said, 'Do you still have [funds for two classes] because I have [enough money for three], and we could combine them for a full music program,' " Laird said. "I think that if you want to provide a better learning environment, one of your goals is to provide young adults with a variety of experiences, and one of those experiences is music."

Two years ago, Willow Glen Middle School scraped together the funds to reinstate a part-time after-school music program. It worked for a short time until the teacher left for a full-time music position at Booksin. A new part-time teacher was never found. Now, however, both schools have found a way to offer music.

"We're excited it's back, and now we're looking at building it up," Laird said.

One aspect of the program that needs to be built up is both schools' supply of instruments. Principals Laird and Day are asking parents and community members to donate any unused instruments to the school.

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