Santee making sound progress on bringing music back to school | Santee - The San Diego Union-Tribune

School district making music education a priority moving forward by Karen Pearlman, The San Diego Union-Tribune.

Lucy George,11, a fifth grader at Carlton Oaks Elementary School, took her first flute first lesson. George is one of more than 300 students enrolled in music lesson at the Carlton Oaks Elementary School in Santee.
Photo: Nelvin C. Cepeda / The San Diego Union-Tribune

Fourth-grader Maia Stone and about a dozen other students sat in chairs and listened intently as local percussion instructor Elizabeth Raymond explained the basics of drumming inside a small classroom at Carlton Oaks School in Santee.

Proper posture. Putting a practice drum pad together. How to grip the drumsticks.

While most of the kids were ready to start banging away on their pads (and some did), Raymond did her best to keep the kids’ attention focused on step-by-step training tips and tried-and-true beginner techniques.

In another room at the school, instructor Joey Ortiz showed students how to press their lips together on a brass mouthpiece, creating a cacophony of noise on trumpets and slide trombones. And in yet another room, instructor Jaime Burke showed students how to assemble their saxophones and flutes and to make some elementary sounds come out of them...

Budget cuts, funding challenges and changes in priorities over the years all but ended the Santee district’s music program and left it with little to offer those children who wanted to learn how to play an instrument. An on-and-off again guitar lesson program flourished, then faded away.

But last year, Santee School District Superintendent Kristin Baranski and the Santee School District Governing Board determined that a strong music program would serve other areas of learning and social well-being, including math and language skills, hand-eye coordination, discipline and teamwork.
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Source: The San Diego Union-Tribune