Fee Not Simple

A $250-a-year band fee at Freeman-Centennial School next school year?

Maybe, maybe not.

The Norfolk School Committee appeared to be sounding a retreat this week on the band fee after hearing from parents this week about how important the band is and how many parents can’t afford the fee.

It’s unclear whether the band fee will be reduced or eliminated (or, possibly, maintained at its current level), because committee members voted to table reconsideration.

Technically, the band fee is still in place, since the committee didn’t rescind or modify its vote of June 2 to implement the fee. But committee members said the committee’s Budget Subcommittee will review the fee once the school district’s budget situation for the fiscal year that starts July 1 becomes clearer, and the School Committee plans to finalize a fee schedule for prekindergarten, kindergarten, school bus, and band at its meeting July 7.

The School Committee is trying to close a projected $811,000 budget gap without eliminating teaching positions, so as to avoid increasing class sizes or hurting the reading program. Since School Committee members aren’t sure whether voters will approve a proposed $1 million-plus operating budget override Tuesday, June 22, they don’t know exactly how big the budget deficit is, but they know they’ll have a gap even if the override passes.

Norfolk parents reacted strongly against the band fee during a packed School Committee meeting this past Wednesday night at Town Hall.

“It’s more than just a program. It’s part of a culture. We as a town decided many years ago this was important to us,” said Barbara Snead, president of the King Philip Music Association, which supports the band program at the regional high school that serves Norfolk.

Betsy Silvestri, mother of a fourth-grader and eighthgrader, said the academic awards at King Philip handed out recently were dominated by band members, suggesting there is a connection between academic achievement and participation in band.

“This is too valuable of a program for us to compromise at any cost,”

Silvestri said.

The School Committee’s band-fee policy allows the superintendent to reduce or waive the fee in cases of hardship, but Silvestri suggested many parents who might qualify for hardship consideration wouldn’t ask for it.

“My family too has faced hardship this year, and I know how hard it would be for me personally to ask anybody for assistance,” Silvestri said.

Jan Cree, who has had three children go through the Freeman-Centennial band program, offered a suggestion she said she heard from her daughter: Why not keep band free for fourth-graders, so parents will be inclined to let them try an instrument without being stuck with a hefty fee?

But Cree said she’d prefer to see no fee at all.

“It should be free, as it has been for years, for all of our children,” Cree said.

Several people made the point that since Norfolk elementary school band feeds into King Philip’s, Norfolk’s band program can claim a share of King Philip’s successes.

Sally Grant, a former member of the School Committee, noted that band inspires creativity. She also pointed out that in many schools kids and others look down on band and don’t support fellow students who participate — unlike at King Philip, where the band is well-known for its high participation and for the many awards its members win at regional and national competitions.

“In this community and at King Philip, the idea of pursuing music is respected and honored,” Grant said.

Grant said she is worried that budget cuts will damage the quality of all programs in the elementary schools and leave “everything mediocre and nothing exceptional.”

Steve McDonough called a band fee “bad policy,” because it might keep some kids from trying an instrument.

“I really think that any fee, it could be the breaking point for a lot of families,” McDonough said.

He said he has been playing the drums since fifth grade, which compares favorably in longevity to sports — a friend of his from school who was captain of the football time in high school hasn’t played football since 1983.

Charles Sherwin, now an adult, told of how he started playing slide trombone 11 years ago while a student at Freeman-Centennial. He went on to play in the King Philip band and in an ensemble at the University of Massachusetts at Lowell.

He said that at work he has gotten several promotions, which he attributes in part to the skills he learned playing in the band at Freeman-Centennial School.

“It taught me to stand up in front of a crowd and present something I believe in, which is why I’m here tonight,” Sherwin said.

Jonathan Smith, a former selectman and School Committee member, said his daughter struggled academically in elementary school and didn’t even try advanced placement courses at King Philip, but still managed to get accepted and flourish in the percussion program at Florida State after participating in band at Freeman-Centennial and at King Philip.

Smith said she applied to four colleges with percussion programs.

“She got accepted to all of them. Shocked the hell out of us,” Smith said, to laughter.

Florida State only accepts four students a year into its percussion program, and Smith said at an audition his daughter by far wasn’t the best performer. But she still got in.

“They saw I her the determination, the drive, the discipline that this program gave her, from third grade onward, to overcome the issues that she had,” Smith said.

School Committee chairman Shawn Dooley said committee members aren’t trying to hurt the band program, but rather to save it without also losing teachers.

“It is an area that could be cut. So we’re trying to save it to make sure it doesn’t get cut,” Dooley said.

Before the parents got going, Dooley announced he planned to ask the committee to decrease the fee by half, to $125 a year.

But after hearing from the parents, School Committee member Thomas Doyle noted that some parents had raised reasonable objections to increases in prekindergarten and kindergarten fees, and he argued that the School Committee ought to consider the fee packages whole. Ultimately, the committee voted 4-1 to table reconsideration of the fees for at least a couple of weeks. (Dooley voted against tabling.)

Before that vote, most committee members sounded open to at least reducing or altering the terms of the $250 band fee.

School Committee member John Oliveri said he opposes a band fee, and he suggested the elementary schools should find other ways to raise money such as getting help from corporations and other organizations and should find other ways to cut costs, including in the purchases it makes.

“I have trouble. I don’t believe that we recognize the asset of the band. Somehow we’ve got to find better ways to do things,” Olivieri said. “… I just think if we have to raise the money some other way, we’ve got to do it.”

Dooley said he doesn’t like imposing fees but that it’s necessary to avoid worse evils.

“To John’s point, it’s just a matter of money,” Dooley said. “… We’re just trying to balance the budget. We’re just trying to keep teachers employed.”

Linda Andrews, also a member of the School Committee, made a similar point.

“I think everybody has to realize that of we charge no band fee that we now have to make cuts to mandatory educational requirements, which would mean more teachers,” Andrews said.

No one in the audience spoke in favor of a band fee, either at $250 or a lesser amount. But School Committee member Ross Gilleland noted that the committee did get some correspondence supporting a band fee as fair and necessary.

Gilleland said he liked the suggestion of waiving fees for fourth-graders to allow them to try an instrument without heavy consequences to their parents.

Gilleland also noted that the band fee took many parents by surprise, which he said he rues.

The Norfolk School Committee’s Budget Subcommittee discussed the possibility of implementing fees for band and increasing other fees a few weeks ago, but those meetings are rarely attended by anyone besides the two School Committee members who make up the subcommittee and school district staff.

The first notably public discussion of the band fee took place during the School Committee meeting June 2, which is the same night the committee voted to implement the fee.

Gilleland said one of the reasons he ran for School Committee was to make sure that committee decisions didn’t sneak up on parents.

“And it feels like it’s happened again,” Gilleland said.

Gilleland said the School Committee needs to hear comments from parents like the ones members heard this week, before taking votes like the ones members made two weeks ago.

He would strive to do a better job of making sure parents know about upcoming topics.

“It’s a real disappointment to me personally that I’ve been a part of what continues to go on,” Gilleland said.

The next School Committee meeting is scheduled for Wednesday, July 7.