Our schools will be consolidating this fall and with that consolidation sadly many of our teachers will be receiving a reduction in force letter.  Unfortunately it appears our newly hired band director, Korey Parlin, has been affected by these changes. What does this mean? It means that one of our current general music teachers will be filling in the position. Our general education teachers do not have the same music education as our director.   Those same general music education teachers had the opportunity in the spring to apply for the directors position but did not do so.  By putting in one of these teachers our school board has all but doomed our program to fail. While I know that our senior music teachers deserve to have job security above someone who was hired after them, they should not be given a position in which they are not qualified to hold. We’ve already had to deal with the affects of covidwreaking havoc on our kids music education, we cannot let our district take away what little they have left.  Many of our kids don’t fit in within the norms of middle and high school and this is where they form their peer groups.  It saddens me that when cuts are made the arts within schools seem to be the ones who suffer.  Us within the band want to assist in helping this cause, which resulted in this petition.