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First, give credit score the place credit score is due: As reported earlier this week, music impresario Quincy Jones, who soared to worldwide fame after graduating from Garfield Excessive Faculty, is donating $50,000 to assist Seattle Public Faculties pay for a jazz program that had been below the ax because of finances cuts.
However John Nesholm and his household basis, whereas not as well-known as Jones, shall be throwing in fairly a bit extra.
Although Seattle Public Faculties has not but named the overall worth, the Nesholm Household Basis dedicated to funding the whole wage and advantages for considered one of two jazz academics at Washington Center Faculty, saving this system this 12 months. The household may also kick in two-thirds of that price in 2024-25, and one other third in 2025-26, to assist hold jazz going.
One wonders if this sort of Eleventh-hour rescue was what college board members had in thoughts once they authorized a hefty labor contract final fall, figuring out it could create the $131 million finances gap the place Seattle’s 50,000 college students now teeter: Whip households into such a panic on the prospect of shedding a treasured program that some beneficiant soul (or souls) shall be compelled to step ahead — as a result of that’s precisely what occurred.
“It’s a second of disaster, and we would like stability,” John Nesholm stated.
Seattle has a number of equally profitable individuals who perceive how important the humanities are to schooling, and the way imperiled. However this sport of rooster isn’t any approach to run a faculty district.
Additional, these comparatively cheap applications have advantages that may ripple by means of total communities — in Jones’ case, throughout the whole world. “For the primary time in my life, I felt no loneliness, no ache, no concern, however relatively pleasure, reduction, and even understanding,” Jones as soon as wrote, describing his first time at a piano keyboard. “From the second I plinked these notes and laid down these first chords, I lastly discovered one thing actual to belief.”
A phalanx of scholars made comparable pleas to the varsity board final spring, begging them to avoid wasting jazz at Washington Center Faculty. It was painful to look at and in a metropolis as rich as Seattle, embarrassing.
At backside, these issues are structural. They stem from a school-funding system tied to pupil enrollment figures, however certain by wage contracts that function individually. It’s the unenviable job of directors and board members to design spending plans that align these components — to not cry wolf and place households in a perennial panic hoping {that a} guardian angel steps ahead.
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