On January 26th Halsey Junior High School was given an amazing gift worth several thousands of dollars of new musical instruments for the school band. Band teacher Ms. Cuevas applied for the grant, hoping to get at least one instrument and was very pleased when all the instruments she asked for were granted to the school.
"I applied for the grant back in October. I found out about it through the VH1 Save the Music website. I was looking there because a friend of mine had received a grant for her school through them. The Save the Music grants are for schools that do not currently have a program, though, making us ineligible for it. The site directed schools who currently have programs to the Mr. Holland's Opus Foundation website (
http://www.mhopus.org/)," Ms. Cuevas recalled.
The Mr. Holland's Opus Foundation provides grants for existing instrumental music programs that may need new instruments or funds to repair an existing inventory. "I requested two French horns, two bass clarinets, a euphonium, and a tuba because those are instruments that we do not currently have in our bands, and that a full concert band should have," she said.
The application process included a pre-qualification and then an extensive online application that included a portion that a parent needed to fill out and a portion for an administrator to fill out, and several short essays about our school's program and why our school was requesting those particular instruments. "I was contacted in late December by a representative, Mr. Kosakoff, a retired music teacher and arts administrator for La Guardia HS," Ms. Cuevas explained. "They were interested in our program and the next step was for them to come observe me in the classroom, meet with Mr. Suraci, and see what we are all about. About a week later, the program director called me to tell me that they were going to fully fund my request."
At the assembly band students were delighted to find out about the gift of the new instruments. Though 8th graders will only get to use the instruments one year, they were pleased to know that the band would be improving its sound, or, as Ms. Cuevas might exclaim, pump up the volume.