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Resident Dana McQuain urges Columbia CUSD 4 to boost music staffing, cites safety and curriculum losses
Summary
A lifelong Columbia resident told the school board the district's marching band and encore classes lack staffing and instructional time, urging the board to add a full-time music position to address safety and foundational learning gaps.
Dana McQuain, a lifelong Columbia, Illinois, resident with two students in the district, told the Columbia CUSD 4 Board of Education at a public hearing that the district’s music program is understaffed and that students’ safety and instruction are at risk.
McQuain said the high-school marching band this fall includes 94 band members and 17 color-guard students — 111 students total — supervised by a single director and one paraprofessional. “Next year we won’t even have the paraprofessional because the student that she aids will be graduating,” McQuain said, arguing that the staffing level is insufficient for practices during hot weather and for safely navigating construction zones around games.
The resident urged the board to consider hiring an additional full-time music faculty member districtwide — what she described as a fifth full-time position — to allow co-teaching, more individualized attention and to prevent the district from “cutting students off” at the elementary and middle-school levels. She also said middle-school encore classes have been shortened from 13 weeks to nine, reducing instructional time that she said hurts long-term musical development.
Board members asked whether the district receives student-teacher assistance for music. Administration said placements of student teachers are inconsistent and depend on colleges sending candidates. “Student teachers are really dependent on SIUE or another college sending them to us,” an administrator said, noting past, but not guaranteed, support from university programs.
McQuain referenced a conversation with Superintendent Dr. Grody in which he suggested pulling a middle-school teacher into the eighth-hour slot, but she said scheduling made that solution infeasible. The board did not take formal action on staffing at the meeting; the comment came during a public hearing convened to discuss the district’s intent to issue up to $33,000,000 in bonds for high-school construction.
The most concrete next steps recorded at the meeting were scheduling the formal budget hearing for 7 p.m. on Sept. 18 and continuing construction planning; no motion or vote on music staffing was recorded.
