Reply To: Bring your own guitar

[nafmeadmin]

There may not be a legal issue in your state yet, but here in Southern California where it’s one of our local districts that got hit by the lawsuit the other year from the ACLU, we cannot require students to buy/rent/provide ANYTHING for school – instruments, reeds, pencils, notebooks – you name it. I teach band and guitar, and we encourage our band students to rent an instrument, but they are not required to. They can use a district-owned instrument for their entire band career. Likewise with guitar. I have a classroom set of guitars for them. We also provide picks, reeds, oil, etc. The district provides some money for these items, the rest is raised by our music boosters. Unfortunately for us, the lawsuit – in which parents sued regarding fees for sports – have made requiring parents to spend any money for anything required for school basically impossible. The reasoning given by the ACLU is that public schools exist to give free education for all, and that has turned in to providing all the tools necessary for learning.