(Note: if you chip in here when the website asks you to, all of the money goes to the website and DOES NOT HELP our cause. If you want to financially support us, please donate directly to the DHS-Holmes Orchestra Boosters)

The goal of this petition is to challenge and overturn the decisions by the district to reassign Mr. Moreno in 2023-24 and secure his position as the Holmes Orchestra Director.

The district has made the decision to have a sole music teacher assigned at each junior high school in the Davis Joint Unified School District. This decision will result in one instructor directing all three disciplines of orchestra, band, and choir per site. This means that Mr. Moreno, the orchestra teacher of twenty-two years at Holmes Junior High School, will be re-assigned and no longer allowed to teach the orchestras at Holmes. This is an extremely unreasonable approach to music education in schools. For instance, a band director cannot demonstrate fundamental technique on a string instrument to orchestra students, nor can they instruct a choir proficiently without appropriate training. This decision will undoubtedly result in a decline of the quality of musical education, enrollment, and student spirit. Being the backbone of the group, individual teachers, like our orchestra director Mr. Moreno, are a vital, nonnegotiable part of a student’s musical education, and the loss of our teacher would be greatly disadvantageous for the students in the orchestra program.