VENTURA : Low-Income Students Get Gift of Music

The two girls didn’t say much, but Jeff Zelinka could tell that his music students were thrilled with their new flute and clarinet.

“These particular girls are not used to being around all that wealth and happiness,” Zelinka, the music teacher at DeAnza Middle School, said of the Rotary Club luncheon where the 12 year-olds accepted their gifts Wednesday. “But it’s quite something for them to get an instrument.”

Rachel Gonzalez and Krystale Boese became the latest of dozens of low-income Ventura County children to receive donations of used musical instruments, thanks to the efforts of the year-old Ventura County Performing Arts Foundation.

The nonprofit group matches poor children interested in music with instruments donated by people who no longer want or need them. The foundation also supplies accredited music teachers to public schools and sponsors performing arts workshops around the area.

It owes its existence to the efforts of James Petrarca, a former professional musician trying to satisfy a burning frustration.

“It’s been a lifelong dream of mine to try and restore a performing arts curriculum to the schools,” Petrarca said.

He believes that music and other arts classes keep some children from dropping out of school by giving them a reason to show up on campus each morning.

Zelinka agrees.

“Everybody has something that keeps them in school,” he said. “For these kids, it looks like it’s music. What else do some kids have to look forward to?”

For a child to receive an instrument from the foundation, all that child has to do is ask. If the family makes above a certain income--the same cut-off figure used for free lunches at the schools--then the foundation will subsidize rent on the instrument. Otherwise it is a gift.

So far, all three dozen instruments distributed have been gifts.