Schools

SVHS Music Department Receives Grant From Grammy Foundation

The music department will use the $5,500 grant for computers to help with musical composition.

The Scotts Valley High School music department had its moment in the spotlight Tuesday night when it was presented with a check for $5,500 and a Grammy Award replica from a member of the National Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences.

The music department is one of only 36 schools in the country selected as a Grammy Signature School for 2011.

Each year, NARAS, the organization behind the Grammy Awards, recognizes the top U.S. public high schools that are making an outstanding commitment to music education. And this year, out of nearly 1,000 schools that applied, SVHS took one of the honors.

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"The Grammy Signature Schools program exemplifies the Grammy Foundation's commitment to fostering excellence in music education in public high schools," said Neil Portnow, president/CEO of NARAS and the Grammy Foundation. "With the generous support of our partners, we've been able to grant the largest number of Grammy Signature Schools awards in recent history. I am especially proud that this year in the Enterprise Award category for economically underserved schools, we have announced the largest number of recipients in the Grammy Foundation's history."

The Enterprise Award category for economically underserved schools is where SVHS’s music department won its grant of $5,500.

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Dr. Susan Silver, superintendent of the Scotts Valley Unified School District, said that though it may not appear that Scotts Valley schools are economically underserved, the district receives a lower amount of money from the state than most other schools.

“People think that because we are in an affluent area, there is money for everything, but we are in one of the lowest-funded school districts in the state of California,” Silver said. “The formulas were set up in the '70s when this was totally rural, and they have never been changed.”

Ned Hearn, a NARAS board member who lives in the San Lorenzo Valley, presented the award and check at the school’s spring concert.

“The decision was based on need and a level of self-demonstrated enterprise,” Hearn said. “In this case, the school has already shown what it can do to support itself by virtue of the recording studio they were able to set up. They already had something in place, but what was in place needed to be augmented.”

With the grant money, the music department will acquire computer stations that will be used alongside the new recording studio at the high school.

“This grant will go toward funding music composition work stations and music computer programs for our students,” SVHS musical director Beth Hollenbeck wrote on the department’s website. “With our new recording studio from Universal Audio and Antares and this grant from the Grammy Foundation, Scotts Valley High School music students can look forward to even more opportunities in music education for next year.”

(To read more about the high school’s new recording studio, check back Monday on Scotts Valley Patch.)


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