Regina Public Schools approves band cuts, denies parent group appeal

The Regina Public School Board has decided to move forward with cutting 4.5 positions from the elementary school band program.

The board decided to do so as part of a way of dealing with a nearly $2.7 million deficit.

The Regina Band Parent Leadership Team (RBPLT) filed to appeal the decision on Wednesday, but it was denied on Thursday.

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“It’s hard to overstate the importance of music in the development of the human brain. I don’t think a lot of folks understand just how important it is as part of education,” said parent rep Mark Claxton with the RBPLT.

Claxton said in addition to brain development, music builds skills and enables lots of important social development as well, especially for kids who might not find a place in activities like sports.

“Music is an outlet for them, it’s a chance for community,” Claxton said. “For some, it’s also a career opportunity that they would not have discovered otherwise – a passion and a vocation they can follow their entire lives.”

Claxton also said the program was already experiencing issues prior to the program cuts stemming from a lack of teachers, time to practice and lack of individual attention for students.

“The uptake for music in Grade 6 in the Regina area is really great. There’s high interest in it, but that interest has dropped off significantly for most kids by the time they reach high school, and that’s because we’re not giving the program enough resources,” he said.

That’s Something CEO Suzanne Gorman of the Saskatchewan Band Association (SBA) can attest to.

“There are a lot of skills that get learned, from reading music to learning your own instrument to then beginning to play as an ensemble,” Gorman said.

“All of those skills and techniques take time, and it’s a progression. But if the students aren’t given enough time together, and if the amount of hours they get with their teacher and hands on practice time isn’t sufficient – quite often they feel discouraged by their lack of progress, or feel as if they didn’t get as far as they thought they would.”

Regina Public Schools has 3,300 staff members for 27,000 students, according to board chair Adam Hicks. (Daniel Reech/980 CJME)

Gorman also said some students might have an issue with having to leave class periodically for the band program.

The SBA CEO said the improvements need to be made to help keep kids inside the program.

She said the cuts represent a significant loss and is extremely disappointed in the decision.

Regina Public School (RPS) Board Chair Adam Hicks praised the elementary band program and said the board wanted to keep it as is, but it faced immense budgetary pressures this year.

Hicks said the board appreciates additional funding provided by the Government of Saskatchewan to address classroom complexity – and will add 100 extra staff members.

However, he said the issue comes with the province’s conditional funding, which specifies where the board can spend and which positions it can hire.

“With the changes that we’ve been looking at, we are going to pretty much the same student to teacher ratio as a number of other divisions we looked at,” Hicks said.

“We know that they’ve had success with their programs, and we can have that same success here. It will not look the same, but we have assured that every single child who wants to take band from grade six to grade eight, we’ll still have that opportunity to do so.”

Hicks said the RPS works with six different unions as well as more out-of-scope staff.

RPS has 3,300 staff members for 27,000 students.

“To keep up with inflation and the other five union agreements, we were short again about $2.7 million, and for the nine years that I’ve been on the board – eight of those nine have been a deficit year where we’re trying to find savings. And it gets tougher and tougher every single year,” Hicks said.

He said the board looked at many different programs and options and that the band cuts only represent a small piece of the cuts, as other reductions were focused on infrastructure and intensive needs support staff.

Hicks added that the board will continually look for ways to bolster the program in future years and is in continuous dialogue with groups like the leadership team.

“We are still continuing this conversation because we know that band helps students, keeps them engaged and develops life skills that are extremely important that we believe in,” he said.

“We are really committed to spending this next year having a deeper conversation and a deeper look into best practices.”

Hicks said there is no appeal process to a board decision that has already been made.