Watertown Elementary Schools Likely to Lose Either String or Wind Music Classes

Watertown elementary school students can learn to play either wind or string instruments under the plan worked up by the music teachers, said Superintendent Ann Koufman, but not both.

The school district will lose 1.5 full-time equivalent music teachers, one from a retirement not being replaced and .5 from budget cuts. The losses mean some classes must be cut.

The general music program will continue, but some of the instrumental program will be lost, Assistant Superintendent Jean Fitzgerald said, unless the district finds some money.

Fitzgerald sat with the music teachers to see what parts of the program will remain next year.

“(Watertown Middle School Principal) Kimo Carter and I worked with the elementary music teachers so we wouldn’t lose both strings and winds,” Fitzgerald said. “Hopefully, if money falls from the sky or if there is some innovative scheduling we hope we can have both.

“It won’t be the same. We don’t want to lose a program, because one it disappears it won’t come back.”

The middle and high schools will also lose some music classes. One grade at the middle school will no longer have general music classes, Carter said, and the high school will lose two music elective courses.

To save either winds or strings at the elementary schools, the district would have to come up with half a teacher salary ­– about $30,000, said School Committee Chairman Tony Paolillo.

“Thirty thousand dollars in a $30 million budget is not a lot, but we have to see what happens,” Paolillo said. “There are a lot of moving parts. We want to figure everything out.”