Being a part of a team like the band comes with responsibility
and lessons about teamwork and rules
Band is a synonym for team. That’s important to remember when considering the situation in which the members of Brownell Middle School’s symphonic band find themselves.
Eight of the band’s 54 members – a good chunk of them from the brass section – are ineligible to participate in a band trip due to academics or bad behavior.
Band teacher Tom Brozene rightly decided to cancel the trip, recognizing that the band’s musical integrity – its reason for performing at the invitation-only Magic Music Days at Disneyland – was compromised beyond repair.
However, parents and students protested, saying that the bad behavior and poor grades of a few shouldn’t affect students who are eligible to participate.
We sympathize, but disagree.
If members of a sports team play badly, the whole team loses, not just the few members who didn’t practice.
And there’s little to no sympathy for this argument: “Many students have joined the band just to become eligible for this trip,” one band parent said, concluding with remarkable hyperbole that canceling the trip “is nothing short of disaster.”
The reason to join the band is to learn about music, not to visit Disneyland.
After a parental uproar over the trip’s cancellation, a compromise emerged.
The first part of the compromise extended the period during which the six academically ineligible band members can raise their grades until May 9. If they do so, they’ll be allowed to go on the trip.
It’s a tempting but unfortunate compromise. Everyone knew the rules going in.
Deadlines are important, and the criteria established at the beginning of the year should have been enforced. What lesson are we teaching by rewriting the rules? That a trip to Disneyland is more important than achieving standards?
Brownell Principal Joe DiSalvo said that the 47 students who qualified for the trip “should not be held hostage” by the students who failed to qualify. But what’s really being held hostage here are standards.
The second part of the compromise – that if the students fail to improve their grades, substitutes will be found – ought to be vetoed by Interim Superintendent Darrel Taylor. Mr. Brozene is right when he says that this is a bad idea. The substitutes have not been part of the band and won’t know their music or their routines.
This part of the compromise makes it clear that what’s most important isn’t grades or teamwork, it’s getting out of school to visit an amusement park.
Mr. Brozene’s initial call – canceling the trip – could not have been an easy decision. He’s a longtime, dedicated teacher who delights in the success of his students.
Instead of supporting him and teaching difficult but important lessons about teamwork and academics, district officials have squandered the opportunity.
That’s the real disaster.
