Monday, November 19, 2001
Teacher shortage leaves towns
without music
By Sidney Schuhmann
Reporter-News Staff Writer
High school marching bands don’t exist
in small West Texas towns such as Hermleigh, Rule and Lueders.
Neither do choirs, orchestras or any other
kind of music education.
There’s a music teacher shortage in
Texas, and small rural school districts are bearing the brunt
of it. They can’t compete with larger schools offering fatter
paychecks, thundering bands and big city amenities.
“A good number of small schools without
band programs are in West Texas,” said Kenneth Griffin, executive
secretary for the Association of Texas Small School Bands.
The drought, oil bust and a shrinking student
population have hit West Texas hard. Music programs are among
the casualties of slashed school budgets. Those that have survived
are struggling to keep their educators.
A nationwide shortage of classroom teachers
has overshadowed the shrinking supply of music teachers. Over
the last three years, the dwindling number of vocal music teachers
in Texas has reached a critical level, according to the American
Association for Employment in Education.
“I constantly hear that Texas is having
severe problems filling band director vacancies,” said Edward
Lisk, former president of the American Bandmasters Association.
“Some of our southeastern states are experiencing similar
conditions.”
Even big cities such as Dallas struggle
to fill music teacher vacancies.
The Dallas Independent School District,
which employs 152 band and orchestra teachers, didn’t fill
two positions this year because no one who was qualified applied,
said Norman Fisher, the district’s fine arts specialist for
band and orchestra. Some jobs received only a couple of applicants.
Cooper High School is seeking an orchestra
teacher after the sudden resignation of Mark Best last week. Cooper
principal Joe Gonzalez said the search is complicated by the fact
that he’s seeking someone familiar with western swing music
to also lead the Cooper Fiddlers.
If music educators are snubbing positions
in the Dallas ISD with a starting annual salary of $34,000, even
fewer are considering rural school districts, which offer thousands
of dollars less.
“It takes an incredibly special kind
of person to teach in these rural settings,” said Richard
Floyd, state director of the University Interscholastic League’s
music department. UIL sponsors academic, athletic and first arts
contests for Texas students.
Rodney Bennett has spent his entire 20-year
career teaching music at a school district with 400 students.
The Munday ISD is 70 miles north of Abilene and has a 61-member
band, which Bennett leads with his assistant and wife, Marilyn.
The couple has thought about moving to a
bigger city where he can access a larger pool of talent.
“It’s almost ludicrous I’ve
stayed this long,” he said. “But the rewards have been
extraordinary.”
The Munday band made its ninth trip to the
UIL marching band state contest last week. The group has been
a finalist eight times. The Purple Cloud Band’s success is
one of the reasons the Bennetts stay. They know the shortage of
band directors could hurt their school if they left.
“Kids in these size communities deserve
great music programs,” he said. “ … Many of the
young people coming out of college with music education degrees
want to go to a bigger district to be an assistant and learn the
ropes.”
Music education experts say the demand for
more music teachers is growing, while the number of people seeking
music degrees is not.
“We have people calling us and begging
us for names” of graduating music majors, said Paul Piersall,
chairman of Abilene Christian University’s music department.
Mike Blakeslee, deputy executive director
of the National Association for Music Education, added that “there
is a real danger that if you have a shortage of music teachers
… they (school officials) will solve it by canceling the
music program.”
Search for sound
Because of their rural locations and small
budgets, some school districts are hiring inexperienced or mediocre
music teachers who can’t land jobs with bigger districts.
Some districts depend on volunteers to lead music programs.
Community members are leading the 20-member
band in the Aspermont ISD in Stonewall County. The 257-student
district couldn’t find a music teacher this year. The minimum
salary offered was $30,000.
“We can compete salary-wise, but there
are very few who are willing to come to rural West Texas,”
Aspermont Superintendent James Hartman said. “And if they
are, they’re not qualified.”
Instead of music, the district is offering
art classes.
Nearby Rochester County Line ISD hunted
six months for a music teacher before it hired a recent Angelo
State University graduate. Kristi Forsberg — one of only
four applicants for her $27,000-a-year job — has her hands
full teaching music to the district’s 127 students.
“You can’t teach a first-grader
the same way you teach a senior in high school, and that takes
some getting used to,” she said.
Her students, who take band classes from
third to ninth grade, are just glad the district found a music
teacher.
“I was afraid if we didn’t have
a band teacher, we would never have a band again,” said Teddye
Harris, a seventh-grader and saxophonist.
Rochester, about 60 miles north of Abilene,
is one of the smallest districts in the state with a marching
band.
But times are getting tough, and Rochester
Superintendent Steven Self said the music program is getting closer
scrutiny.
“In our community, there is still a
commitment to band,” he said. “We might look into sharing
a band director to save money.”
Some small towns already are, said Griffin,
the Association of Texas Small School Bands official.
Larger schools have staffs to support the
band director. Abilene High School and Cooper High School band
directors have as many as five assistants.
Small school districts may have one person
who teaches music and leads band, sometimes before or after school,
making for long work days. The stress can leave music educators
burned out.
Darin Johns, 33, watched it happen to fellow
music majors from college who were flooded with phone calls from
anxious schools when they graduated.
“Those small schools will get someone
fresh out of college who’s never taught before and they’ll
be by themselves,” said Johns, who teaches music in Ballinger
ISD. “They don’t know what to do, they’re lost
and they end up getting out of the profession.”
With 11 years of experience — six years
of which were spent at Franklin Middle School in Abilene —
Johns earns $46,900 a year. In Dallas, a band director with that
amount of experience would earn $44,000 a year.
Like most band directors who work extra
hours and attend Saturday competitions, Johns’ salary includes
a stipend. He also works one month more than Ballinger’s
classroom teachers, who, with the same amount of experience, earn
$35,140 a year.
One way to help quell the music teacher
shortage is to encourage more students to enter the profession,
said Piersall, the ACU professor.
“There is no field where you get to
work so closely with students,” he said. “It’s
very rewarding. Most of us get paid to do what we would do for
free. It’s a pretty good gig.”
Contact learning writer Sidney
Schuhmann at 676-6721 or schuhmanns@abinews.com
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Copyright
©2001, Abilene Reporter-News / Texnews / E.W. Scripps.
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