Music classes cut due to a decrease in enrollment
December 14, 2015
Students were disappointed to learn recently that music classes will not be offered next semester because of a
Junior Ryan Ilano and freshman Ivan Catalan work on their keyboard skills during keyboarding class. Due to a decrease in enrollment, no music classes will be offered next semester. In order to bring back music, the school enrollment needs to increase until the school has enough students to gain back music teacher Wes Hambright.
drop in school enrollment.
“There was a certain amount of teachers that is given to a school… Whatever the number of enrollment we had last year… dropped below the requirement,” Principal Deb Smith said.
Daniel Pearl Magnet High School’s faculty was reduced on Sept. 8 which caused the music department to shut down for next semester.
During the 2015 fall semester, the enrollment dropped to 365 students because Los Angeles Unified School District reviewed the school’s statistics and determined that the school did not meet the requirement of 401-430 students for 14 teachers. Therefore, the district decided to reduce the total amount of teachers by one.
While temporarily losing a teacher, the school was able to reallocate the school’s funds to prevent losing two faculty members from teaching core classes by using the school’s budget to pay for those teachers.
“The extra funds that we had to cover for other expenses… We will have less of those to spend on those things than we had looked forward to,” Smith said.
It’s going to be really hard without Mr. Hambright…guiding us to create music.
— Freshman Amanda Jimenez
During his time off, music teacher Wes Hambright is planning to compose and teach music while also working on his upcoming documentary.
”Hopefully the enrollment will go back up in August and the reallocation of funds will also help,” Hambright said.
As for the students who are currently in a music class, they will be switched to a different elective class that will be announced soon. They will continue the second part of their current music class in
the next upcoming school year to be able to receive full credit for their performing arts requirement.
“It’s going to be really hard without Mr. Hambright…guiding us to create music,” freshman Amanda Jimenez said.
seedlings • Apr 22, 2016 at 9:28 pm
the enrollment dropped to 365 students because Los Angeles Unified School District reviewed the school’s statistics and determined that the school did not meet the requirement of 401-430 students for 14 teachers.