CAMARILLO : Board to Continue Music Program
The Pleasant Valley School District board decided Thursday to continue the instrumental music program this semester, despite a $5,400 shortfall in parent contributions for the fall.
Save Our Kids’ Music took over the music program in the Camarillo district in January, 1992, after the school board eliminated instrumental music instruction during a budget-cutting round in the fall of 1991.
The board agreed to lend the group money to hire music instructors if Save Our Kids’ Music would repay the loan with donations raised from local businesses and parents whose children took the classes.
Although the group is about $5,400 short of repaying the loan for the fall semester, board members agreed to lend the group up to $26,000 to pay the instructors’ salaries this semester and to allow more time for repayment of the old debt.
About 400 students in the district’s 13 elementary and junior high schools are enrolled in music classes this year, learning to play instruments ranging from flutes to tubas.
But only about half of their parents have paid any part of the requested $70-per-semester donation.
“Apparently a lot of people do not understand that the district is not paying for the program at all, and if we don’t raise enough donations, we’re going to lose the whole thing,” said Reese Copsey, a leader of Save Our Kids’ Music.
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