Amy Steiner, the only music teacher at McKinley High School, said she was told this month she will not have a job there next school year because the school has decided to cut its music program.
“I feel like I’m being fired,” she said. “That feels so weird.”
Superintendent Tonja M. Williams will now cut costs over two years and, to account for deficits, commit between $70 million and $80 million of the district's $375 million in reserves for this budget cycle, said Buffalo Schools Chief Financial Officer Jim Barnes.
That means the soundproof band room, “tens of thousands of dollars of equipment” and three Wenger sound-isolated practice rooms will soon collect dust, she said.
Two other district music teachers – Tiffany Whitefield and Pam Incontro – spoke in front of the Buffalo School Board Wednesday night at the Buffalo Academy for Visual & Performing Arts, voicing displeasure at anticipated cuts and that music programs are in jeopardy each year in individual schools.
“When administrators were forced to decide, the easiest thing to cut is instrumental music,” Whitefield said. “It’s extra. It’s not something that’s included in the budget automatically at the school.”
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“We’ve been down this road before,” lamented Timothy Lyon, who teaches instrumental music at Southside Elementary and Dr. Charles R. Drew Science Magnet. Lyon said he teaches at Southside four days per six-day cycle this year; next year that will be cut in half due to a lack of funding, he said. “It’s been whittled away little by little.”
Whitefield and Steiner said 14 music teachers in Buffalo Public Schools have had their positions eliminated for the next school year as a result of school-based budgets. But the district insists those decisions are not final.
At the board meeting Wednesday and after a request for comment Thursday, Superintendent Tonja M. Williams did not confirm any cuts, and Buffalo Schools Chief Financial Officer Jim Barnes has said the plan remains to avoid layoffs – school leadership even shifted its budget plan to dip into district reserves and spread cost-cutting measures over two years.
“We are in a difficult time and everything that we have given to our children over these last three years and before is necessary,” Williams said. “Any reductions are going to be very, very difficult, and I just want to assure you and the rest of the audience that whatever we need to do will only be after a lot of thought and a lot of strategy. We’re doing everything that we can to mitigate removing services for our children and at the same time remaining fiscally responsible,” she added.
An influx of funds from the final state budget and $10 million from the Superintendent’s Equity Holdback fund could be ways to reinstate programs and staff initially eliminated at the school level.
Like schools throughout the nation, Buffalo is in the thick of a challenging budget season due to the expiration of federal Covid-19 relief funds and a financially motivated desire to balance declining student enrollment with a roster of teachers and staff that has grown steadily, especially since the pandemic.
Students, parents and teachers object to district eliminating instrumental instruction in 2013-14 academic year at 14 of 28 sites where it is now
Individual schools last month submitted their school-based budgets, a process established over the last decade in which schools receive an allocation of funded positions.
“Based on a formula that is driven by student enrollment, NYSED mandates, and grant funding, the School Based Management Team determines staffing priorities,” said Jeffrey Hammond, spokesperson for the school district. A site-based management team (SBMT) comprises teachers, parents, students and building administrators.
“Please help restore and save these instrumental programs,” Whitefield, a teacher at Waterfront Elementary, told the board. “Don’t leave them up to the admin or the SBMT to decide.”
‘It could be so much more, so much better’
Lyon said music educators impact students a little differently than a typical classroom teacher. They may start small group lessons in fourth grade, for example, and continue working with the same students through eighth grade.
“We’re one of the few people who get to really build relationships with kids and families,” he said.
Despite past setbacks, like seeing the music program at Hutchinson Central Technical High School and her job cut in 2019, Steiner has stuck around.
“So many of these kids have been through tragedy and trauma, and to see them come to my room and smile and be happy, I can’t even tell you how beautiful that is,” Steiner said. Several music teachers said it’s the therapeutic effect of music on children in a poor district – and the sense of community it provides them – that keeps them invested in an otherwise frustrating environment.
Lyon disputed Buffalo Schools’ commitment to equity. “That’s simply not been the case,” he said, “and there’s no equity with suburban schools.”
Five teachers and two parents who sued the Buffalo Board of Education over the district's music and arts offerings lost in court Thursday.
Steiner and Lyon have been vocal advocates for Buffalo music students in the past; they co-petitioned, with three other teachers and two parents, a 2019 legal action against Buffalo Schools that argued the district did not equitably offer music classes to its students. The petitioners lost when a State Supreme Court justice and appellate court in Rochester determined the district has discretion over what arts programs are offered, and that it abided by state regulations.
The aftermath of that petition has left Buffalo Schools’ music program barely clinging to life, especially at the high school level. Of 20 high schools, only four have music programs – three of which are criteria schools, or programs in which an audition or test is required, Lyon and Steiner said. South Park is the only noncriteria high school to offer instrumental music.
“I am concerned for my 72 eighth-graders, and eighth-graders across the district, who will have nowhere to play when they get to high school,” said Incontro, a general and instrumental music teacher at West Hertel Elementary, to the Buffalo School Board Wednesday night.
“It is heart-wrenching to know that only students in some buildings have access to the proven benefits of instrumental music study,” she continued.
Incontro, who was grateful administrators at West Hertel were able to keep music for next year, urged district leaders to find creative ways to entrench music in each school’s annual budget. Maybe that means mandating a music option for two days per six-day cycle, she told the board, and leaving it up to the school-based management team to decide if it can afford more.
A lack of a mandate gives no assurance a program will be funded the next year and produces “transient” teachers, Steiner said. “You can never build anything,” she said.
Lyon said that after the Covid-19 pandemic, kids have trouble expressing themselves after social isolation. He said music gives them both an “emotional release and creative outlet.” In his 24th year in the school district, Lyon said past advocacy efforts have not been fruitful, he’s still around in part because of the “wonderful” students. There’s just potential for more, not less.
“It could be so much more and so much better,” he said.