GROUP WANTS BAND INSTRUCTOR RETAINED

About 85 Cape Girardeau Central band students and parents met Wednesday night to organize a petition drive against school district plans to cut one of three band directors.

A proposal to cut Mark McHale's position as band director and reduce the overall band budget by 20 percent are some of the district's across-the-board budget cuts aimed at offsetting a $1.2 million funding shortfall.

But band parents said Wednesday they doubted any other school district programs would suffer a staff cut of one-third.

Bill Thorpe said the band program includes about 350 students. "As I understand, that's the largest group of students in a particular program in the system," he said.

"We're concerned about the proposal to cut one-third of the teaching component of that program. It's impossible for two people to run that program."

Thorpe and other parents, in addition to a number of students, also asked that not only a third band instructor be retained, but that McHale not lose his job.

They explained that the Cape Girardeau School District now has three band directors who "team-teach," with Ron Nall specializing in brass, Neil Casey in woodwinds, and McHale in percussion.

Brian Massey, a junior at Central High School and a percussionist, said he won't participate in band next year if McHale isn't teaching.

Corey Wright, who was one of two ninth-grade percussionists to make the all-district band this year, said McHale more than any of the other band directors has helped him improve.

"I have no way of further advance~ments if he's gone," Wright said. "The other band instructors don't know very much about percussion.

"I will probably quit band if Mr. McHale's not around. In my march~ing career, he has helped me every day of the week, and I don't think without him it would be the same."

Sue Case, president of the Band Parent Association at Central, said that it's important for the district to continue to have three band directors and the "team approach" that allows each to specialize.

Mike Shivelbine said that the band program has seen marked improvement as instructors have specialized.

"The band's overall performance and quality has improved since Mark McHale, a percussion expert, was added to the staff," he said.

Shivelbine said that in 1988, only 10 students were selected to the Junior High School Honor Band, comprised of the best musicians from a four-county area. In 1990, with three band directors in the ninth grade and two in the eight grade program, 29 Cape Girardeau students were selected.

That number climbed to 43 in 1991, and this year, when all three directors taught in eighth and ninth grades, the school district placed 70 students in the honor band program.

Shivelbine said the high school concert band now earns top scores at band festivals each year, and the percussion ensembles that McHale works with have never scored less than a "1," or superior rating, at district or state competition.

"That's pretty effective teaching, I think," Shivelbine said. "If we let the school board members know as a group what this cut means, I hope they would have the courage because it will take some courage to vote to have this reversed and make sure that Mark is retained."

Thorpe said the band program is "every bit as important" to education as other curricular and extracurricular programs.

"When a program is as important as the band is that involves so many students and is a curricular activity in the sense that students take band as an elective course and are graded it seems to me that reducing the program's teachers by one-third is not reasonable," he said.

Kelvin Sebastian, a former Central band member who has been a music instructor in Israel the past 14 years, also said that the band program should be the last to suffer cuts. He credited Cape Girardeau's band program for his success in music instruction.

"More in a band program than in any other program in school you have a teacher who can give more than just the subject to students," he said. "They spend more time with them and teach them things that go far beyond music.

"The thing that made the most difference in my life wasn't the music, but the men who gave a part of themselves."