Home • Organizing for Action • Analyzing the Situation • Planning and Strategy • Getting to Work • Evaluating Progress • Appendix 1 and 2
In this section, you will…
Plan!
Direct the campaign toward achieving the specific objectives you have set for your program. Your plan will need to work on several levels, just as the forces affecting school music work on several levels.
- To meet budget problems that affect the school system in general, plan to concentrate on PR and political action. If the problem is specifically targeted at music, concentrate on direct action toward the decision making level at which the problem lies.
- To pursue legislative action, plan on efforts to persuade the individuals or decision-making body that is causing the problems. Stress the information you have gathered about the status of your program.
- To gather public support, plan to stress the goals set for your program and use the sample press releases and other materials in part 4 of this guide. Direct your efforts to helping the public (especially critical segments of the public) understand the benefits of music education.
What Do You Do Now?
Addressing the problems that face school music can be a long and complex process. Getting a school district to hire more music specialists, for example, might involve collecting supporting material from NAfME’s The National Standards and the recommendations of the state education department, developing a rationale for increasing the amount of instruction delivered by music specialists rather than by classroom teachers, and getting parents and others to express an active role in supporting school music.
Even if your music program is in great shape, you must build and maintain a base of support. Do this by offering your students the broadest and best music education possible, and by letting the public, parents, and administration know about it.
- Try to develop a program that involves as many students as possible—performers and nonperformers.
- Be sure your students and parents understand about the importance of music education and about the lifelong knowledge and skills your students are gaining. Use a variety of means to do this, including providing information at performances, at meetings of parents, and through the media.
- Be sure that your school and district administrators and your school board members understand the value of your program. Invite them to attend your programs, to visit classes, to open concerts, and to present student awards. Also, provide them with reports at least once a year on the needs, goals, and values of the music program.
- Write thank you notes to decision makers for their support. Ask students and parents to do the same.
- Make sure that the purpose of music instruction in your schools is expressed in terms of its value to the students. Support for music suffers if the program is seen as ego gratification for the teachers.
And that is just the beginning. Getting principals and other administrators to give a favorable recommendation to the school board usually requires careful work (they may need to be gently pushed to do the right thing). And then, of course, the funds to hire new teachers need to be found. If you want to improve any aspect of your music program, you will have to engage in careful, intelligent, and persistent work.
To Meet Budget Problems…
- If your school district faces funding cuts that are applied evenly across the board, join forces with other organizations, such as the PTA, that support the general quality of your schools. Your efforts must:
- Make a concerted attempt to reach and influence those with power over the budget as a whole.
- Gather support from parents and other members of the community.
- If your music program has been singled out for budget rollbacks, you must establish the point that every part of the school program must be affected equally.
- Contact music supervisors, the superintendent, and the school board, and convince them of the importance of maintaining funding for the music program. (Go through the established decision-making structure).
- Gain the support of citizens, principals, and other teachers—all those to whom the decision makers turn for information and opinion. (Show them the videotape School Music and “Reverse Economics,” in which John Benham addresses budgetary problems and program cuts.)
To Pursue Legislative Action…
Each music education advocacy group represents an informal, cooperative effort rather than a formal organization with any legal standing. Advocacy groups may want to:
- Identify and reach those with the power to solve your problems.
- Keep all legislators informed of and sympathetic to the cause of music education.
- Build and maintain public support, which provides by far the best argument for reaching public servants.
- Use the petition in appendix 2 to gather signatures and persuade decision makers that public support exists for music education.
To Gather Public Support…
If your program is successful, well established, and faces no current emergencies in funding or legislation, congratulations! Even with this type of success, however, a lack of support from all the members of the school system and of the wider community may lead to eventual trouble. If you have identified any erosion in your base of support, take time to rectify matters now.
- Work toward educating all the residents in your community at large about the value and purposes of music in our schools. Usually they have only a vague understanding of the program.
- Ask music educators to work more effectively with their colleagues, even those not in music.
- Work with the entire music community to maintain better contact with the community at large.
- Contact specific portions of the community at large, such as merchants or business executives, directly or through appropriate community organizations.
- Use the local media to increase the visibility of the program.
Mapping the Power Structure
Before you start to work directly with your local leaders, you will have to determine which legislative or administrative bodies hold the specific power to improve the music program. You need, in other words, to construct a table of organization. Your work with these groups will be greatly helped if you answer three questions about each group:
- Who are the most influential individuals (committee chairs, senior members, or other respected figures)?
- When and where can they be contacted? You will need to know the calendar of each legislative or administrative body.
- To whom are they r
esponsible? You should gain support from the constituents of elected officials or the superiors of middle-level officials—and you should use this support as a point in your favor.
Table of Organization
City, County, or Parish Administration
Calendar (when are they in session) _______________________________
Extent of authority ______________________________________________
Elected officials:
Name: ________________________________________________________
Title: _________________________________________________________
Constituency: __________________________________________________ Name: ________________________________________________________
Title: _________________________________________________________
Constituency: __________________________________________________
Name: ________________________________________________________
Title: _________________________________________________________
Constituency: __________________________________________________
Appointed officials:
Name: ________________________________________________________
Title: _________________________________________________________
Supervisor: ____________________________________________________ Name: ________________________________________________________
Title: _________________________________________________________
Supervisor: ____________________________________________________ Name: ________________________________________________________
Title: _________________________________________________________
Supervisor: ____________________________________________________
Local School Board
Calendar (when are they in session) _______________________________
Extent of authority ______________________________________________
Personnel
Name: ________________________________________________________
District or at large? ____________________ Term of office: _________
Address: ______________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________
Name: ________________________________________________________
District or at large? ____________________ Term of office: _________
Address: ______________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________
Name: ________________________________________________________
District or at large? ____________________ Term of office: _________
Address: ______________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________
Getting the Facts Down
- Develop a fact sheet for your campaign. This should outline the information that is most basic to your efforts in a form that can be used as a basis for all of your groups’ letters, speeches, and releases. Make certain that it includes:
- A line that identifies your music education advocacy group.
- A statement of practical philosophy—why music education is so important to young people. (Use some of the material on the NAfME MusicFriends Network.
- A description of the current state of music education in your area.
- A list of the goals that you have set for the school music program. You will probably find it useful to link these goals to the National Standards and to NAfME’s Opportunity-to-Learn Standards.
- A summary of your basic strategy, written in general terms (a “call to arms” rather than a detailed course of action).
Workers in your campaign will likely use this fact sheet as their single most important source of information—so you need to pay special attention to the accuracy of every detail that it contains.
