After more than 70 years, Slater Middle School will close in June and the future of its growing music program remains uncertain.
The final public performance by the Slater Middle School beginning and advanced bands will be at the Luther Burbank Rose Parade and Festival in downtown Santa Rosa on May 17. The Spartans will be joining musicians from Hilliard Comstock Middle School and Piner High School.
Just after the Slater Middle School advanced band hit the final notes of Brant Karrick’s “Spy Chase” Thursday night in the school gymnasium, there was a brief silence.
The moment was followed by a round of rousing, and perhaps knowing, applause from the scores of parents, siblings, grandparents and well-wishers who were seated in metal folding chairs on the gym floor and stationed on the red and gold bleachers.
Those notes marked the end of an era.
Barring a combined band performance with Hilliard Comstock Middle School and Piner High School in the Luther Burbank Rose Parade in Santa Rosa on May 17, the pieces were last to be publicly performed by members of Slater’s award-winning instrumental program.
The emphatic end to the concert Thursday evening belies the uncertainty that now surrounds the music program going forward.
When Slater closes this June as part of historic budget cuts and consolidation for Santa Rosa City Schools, the middle school music program that will transfer to the campus of Montgomery High School will very likely be smaller. And students are unlikely to have access to facilities equivalent to what they enjoy at Slater: an acoustically designed classroom with soaring ceilings; three small, connected practice rooms; and long stretches of shelves that hold all manner of musical instruments from euphoniums to violins.
Slater music teacher Sara Williams, who was already bracing herself for a flood of emotions when her students played the last-ever spring concert at Slater, was hit with another blow when she was told by school administrators Wednesday that her program would be cut by 40% next year. Her lineup of five unique music classes will be reduced to three, she said she was told.
Which two will be cut is unclear, she said.
Santa Rosa City Schools spokesperson James Hodgman said Friday that the district is still confirming course offerings for the fall and would not confirm or comment further on cuts announced at Slater.
In an emotional address to the audience Thursday night, Williams called teaching the Spartans for the past five years her “dream job.”
Before the start of the one-hour program Thursday, and as students milled around eating an early dinner, fiddling with instruments and sometimes messing around, Williams explained her program and its growth.
“I started with two classes,” she said. “Prior to me starting it was just one class of band and it wasn’t differentiated by level and that was the entire program … it had been cut down to that.”
But under her tutelage, and with the support and partnership of Montgomery music teachers Matt Perez and Dana Alexander, as well as then-Slater principal Mitch Tucker, the program has grown substantially in a short time, proving a deep desire for music among this age group, Williams said.
What started with two classes five years ago, today has grown to five: Guitar, Orchestra, Beginning Band, Advanced Band and Choir. Williams has 114 kids taking some kind of music class at Slater.
Proof of that growth was evident Thursday night: The combined bands were too large to fit on Slater’s stage, so students had to perform on the gym floor at eye level with their audience.
“Offering music that is completely free to join, where we have all the instruments and we are handing them these instruments and saying, ‘You can use these and you get free music lessons?’” she said. “If you tried to do that outside of school, an instrument is thousands of dollars, lessons are hundreds of dollars. The fact that we can offer this in school? I think that’s incredible.”
But the program’s popularity comes at a perilous time for Sonoma County’s largest school district.
Santa Rosa City Schools is facing a budget shortfall of at least $20 million. The board of trustees voted in February to shutter six schools over two years while also converting Santa Rosa and Montgomery high schools to campuses that will accommodate seventh through 12th graders starting in August.
Both Slater and Santa Rosa middle, as well as Brook Hill and Albert Biella elementary schools, are slated to close in June. Elsie Allen High School is scheduled to absorb students from Hilliard Comstock Middle School in the fall of 2026 when both the middle school and Steele Lane Elementary close.
The unprecedented upheaval wrought by impending closures and restructuring has left many teachers, students and staff across the district deeply anxious about their futures.
And now Williams worries that middle school students who want music, who need music, will be turned away.
“Some of the groups you see here tonight will not exist moving forward,” she told the assembled crowd Thursday. “The class that your student may have felt like they really found their place, where they felt safe and happy and able to express themselves, will be gone.
“I did exactly what the district asked me to do and what I was hired to do here,” she said. “And now, when it’s just finally hitting the peak of what a successful music program looks like, they are taking it away. They are taking away a vital experience for students. They are taking away classes that literally change lives.”
Eighth grader Karina Doyle played music for the first time last year in one of Williams’s classes. It sparked something. Today, Doyle is enrolled in zero period, coming to school an hour early so that her schedule is freed up to take two of Williams’s classes. She is now also a member of the Santa Rosa Symphony Aspirante Youth Orchestra.
Playing the cello Thursday night, Doyle was one of just two soloists on the program.
“It brought me a new hobby, music,” she said. “It allowed me to branch out to other things, like outside of school for music.”
Eighth grader Kimberly Lopez, who played both the cello and the alto saxophone Thursday night, grew emotional talking about what the Slater music program, and Williams, have meant to her.
“It changed a lot of my life,” she said. “It just makes me happy, just to be in band and with her. She’s really great and makes me happy.”
For Williams, it is crucial to give students at this age an opportunity and the freedom to try all manner of things musically, with the hope — expectation really — that kids will find their place and their voice.
“It allows them to have that creative outlet,” she said.
In turn, those programs can act as a tool to boost enrollment. To Williams’ way of thinking, it makes fiscal sense to support such a growing program, not cut it.
“We are the only school in town with a middle school choir,” she said of Santa Rosa City Schools campuses. “None of the other middle schools have choir so I feel like we have all these things that are really special, that have been a draw to our school.”
In the short term, Williams will focus on the program’s final choir concert in the coming weeks and the upcoming performance in the city’s Rose Parade.
She acknowledged it’s hard not to let the uncertainty unnerve her.
“I’m not a crier, but I have cried a lot recently,” she said. “I feel like I have done everything right, like I have tried my hardest to build something beautiful here, to achieve a dream that I thought the district shared with me.”
You can reach Staff Columnist Kerry Benefield at 707-526-8671 or kerry.benefield@pressdemocrat.com. On Instagram @kerry.benefield.
The final public performance by the Slater Middle School beginning and advanced bands will be at the Luther Burbank Rose Parade and Festival in downtown Santa Rosa on May 17. The Spartans will be joining musicians from Hilliard Comstock Middle School and Piner High School.
‘It changed a lot of my life’: Swan song for Slater Middle School’s prized instrumental music program – The Press Democrat
