Okay, Oscar watchers. Most of the time I wear the “Hi, I’m the scary Oscar person hat.” But you all know I’m a mom too. My daughter is just one year younger than this website. I held her as a baby in my lap while Gladiator beat Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (I did not scream). I made her cry as a young child when Denzel Washington and Halle Berry both won Oscars (I did scream). She high-fived me when Martin Scorsese finally won his Oscar. She is now almost 13 years old. Which means this website is almost 12. It’s hard to believe I’ve been doing this so long until I look at her and I see how much she’s grown.
She is in seventh grade and has been playing the cello for five years. She was lucky enough to play in the orchestra for this year’s musical, Bye Bye Birdie. The annual musical at Walter Reed is quite an event. This isn’t a showbiz school, in fact, it’s a public school and the children all wear uniforms to prevent gang violence. ¬†I know my daughter has thrived there and there isn’t anything I wouldn’t do, including whoring myself to y’all, for HER or for her school’s music department. ¬†To misquote Tom Hanks there are angels on the streets of Studio City and they are teaching our kids the wonder and beauty of music.
The teachers, needless to say, work practically for free. But I tell you what, people. You’ve never seen music teachers like the ones at Walter Reed. The time they spend rehearsing after school, performing at night is not paid time. The pay they do get? Most of them can’t even afford to send their own kids to college.
I have seen Bye Bye Birdie three times now.  I was most taken by their decision to cast an African American in the Elvis role.  To see him sing and dance amid all of those screaming girls in the 1950s was a perspective changer, to be sure.  And you know, it worked.  It worked REALLY well.
This past week the hard-working music department at Walter Reed won the Bravo award against competing schools in the district. A few days later the teachers there were handed pink slips. It is described in hideous, agonizing detail on this site:
More than 60 percent of the 1,600 students at the middle school go through the award-winning music program. Principal Donna Tobin said, “I am extremely proud of our music program” and she said she is aware that people are attracted to the school because of it.
They are part of 145 music teachers across the district getting their RIF notices this week in LAUSD.
A Reduction In Force letter means that a teacher could be moved to a different location, or must take a lower classification, or there is no position available. McDonough’s letter said that he could find out by September if he would be eligible for a substitute position. That’s not something that a teacher who worked on Broadway with Stephen Sondheim is likely to do.
“I won’t wait around to be a substitute,” McDonough said. “This school deserves better. There is a strong Music Booster support, and the parents and students are the customers. Shame on the people who made decisions like this to essentially decimate the music program.”
Now, I don’t know about you but I don’t plan to sit idly by while the rich get richer and poor get screwed. As they say in The Hangover, “not up in here.” I don’t know what I can do to help, other than make a bunch of noise publicly. Since I have a website that people read, well, I’m using it just this once to ask you, dear readers, to sign the petition I’ve created in order to start showing support.
The fight has only just begun. I have faith that we will win. And there isn’t much I have faith in, believe me.
Thanks for your time.
The petition is here.
The story is here.