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Students and staff urge Board to protect arts, student support teams amid proposed cuts
Summary
At the March 18 Buffalo Board of Education meeting, students, teachers and counselors urged the district to preserve arts programs and school-based student support teams, warned that proposed swaps of counselors for social workers would harm students, and pressed for alternatives to suspensions following an Attorney General report.
Hundreds of community members filled the meeting as teachers, counselors, parents and students told the Buffalo Board of Education that proposed budget moves could strip vital arts instruction and core student-support services from schools.
Music teacher David Aquilina told the board instrumental programs should be funded centrally rather than from fragile school discretionary budgets, and shared attendance and discipline data from his School 72 band: “My band students at Lorraine have less than half the daily absences of the rest of their peers,” he said, reporting an average of 7.8 absences for band students compared with 17.1 for other students. “Everything we do in our schools is predicated on students being there.”
Why it matters: speakers said arts and…
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