Cellists get help to face the music
Parents, volunteers step in after public-school funding eliminated
When the audience rose to its feet and gave a long standing ovation at the end of Sunday’s cello concert at city hall, it was as much for the parents of many of the young cellists as for the musicians themselves.
For there would have been no Cello Extravaganza, featuring 80 cellists, if a group of parents hadn’t stepped up to save a music enrichment program that Edmonton Public Schools cut from its budget last spring.
EPS spent about $220,000 annually on the after-school program, which had provided approximately 650 students with space in 12 schools, rented instruments, and lessons in strings and choral music, since 1959. It decided it could no longer do so because of provincial budget cuts to education.
Two groups, the All-City Choirs Parents Association and the Edmonton String Players Association, which were already supporting the program through registration fees and fundraising, initially declared they would cover the cost of continuing the program. The String Players Association succeeded.
It hasn’t been easy, Carolyn Dagenais, president of the Edmonton String Players Association said before the start of the free performance in support of the Music Enrichment Program.
She doesn’t know of any similar program that has had to fight to stay alive after being dropped by a school board. But the parents knew it was critical to keep the program alive because if they had let it go, “we wouldn’t be able to gather the water back into the faucet once it’s been opened,” she said.
“Luckily, I’ve been an administrator in a law office for 10 years which has been useful, but there’s lot of infrastructure the school board had that simply wasn’t in place, and we sort of had to reinvent the wheel in some aspects in dealing with our home schools, getting instruments and rentals together.”
A core group of 40 parent volunteers spend hours and hours a week running the program. Dagenais, who works full-time and parents four kids, estimated her commitment is about 40 hours a week. That type of “heroic volunteerism” isn’t sustainable, which is why the parents hope to eventually hire a person to administer the program, Dagenais says.
Dad Shawn Lund, whose 14-year-old son Tyler performed Sunday, and who helped with the parents group in the beginning, can’t say enough about the value of the program.
“If it didn’t exist we would have to look at much more expensive training. It would limit a lot of opportunities for kids to get involved in (music). You either pay the higher cost or not,” says Lund, who has three children, including Tyler, registered in the program.
“With this program they’ve been able to make it very much affordable ($200 to $300 for a weekly group lesson during the school year) so pretty much any kid can come in. They can rent instruments from them, which when you’re talking the cello, you’re talking thousands of dollars to buy them.”
Lund thinks the school board was short-sighted in cutting the program.
“That being said, we’re now on the other side of it and we can see how the program can flourish when it’s no longer with Edmonton Public. Edmonton Public did an amazing job and is still doing an amazing job by allowing their schools to be used (by the program).”
One benefit of parents taking over the program is that it can now expand outside of the Edmonton public school board to include children in St. Albert and Sherwood Park, Dagenais says.
Tyler has been taking cello lessons through the program for several years. Ten-yearold Darrian Amour, on the other hand, took his first lesson six months ago.
“It’s kind of something different for us because we’re kind of like more of a sport family, so his mom got him into cello to broaden his horizons,” his dad, Dexter Amour explains.
In truth, Amour probably wouldn’t have paid for more expensive lessons or bought his son a cello if the program didn’t exist.
“At this level (when kids are always changing their minds about what they want to try,) if I had to pay more, I’m not sure that I would,” he said.
Although parents have saved the program, cello teacher Diana Nuttall, who organized the Extravaganza, still believes strongly in the need for a public school music program, “because there are many children who would never have the opportunity to even come across a cello. “Lots of parents aren’t able to provide their children with private lessons.”