Illinois has had a long history of neglecting the arts in schools -- my own alma mater used to (back in the day) have a marching band, a concert band, an orchestra, a men's choir, a mixed choir, a jazz chorus, two theatrical stage performances per year (one comedy, one drama -- and one year we also had a week of one-acts and Vaudeville-style shows, in which I played an important role as a gorilla), an annual art show (with concert performances by band & orchestra), and I know I'm forgetting something important, but it's Tuesday and I'm still recovering from the weekend.
At any rate, now the high school has no choir, no orchestra, no concert band, one theatrical performance per year (if they're lucky), and the arts show is sponsored not by the school system but by the Buchanan Center for the Arts -- an independent local group. The orchestra, designed to teach non-athletes how to work as a team, has been replaced by the Monmouth Civic Orchestra, run and maintained by one hard-working woman. When she retires (and she hints it will be in the none-too-distant future), we will be hard pressed to find any ten people to do all she has done for music in our community.
Of course, much of what we did in the arts programs, back in the day, was funded by the various clubs (glee club, art club, etc.) going door-to-door selling candy and cheezy stationery products, holding bake sales, designing and selling silk-screened t-shirts, throwing barbecues, and all sorts of other attention-and-money-grabbers. Still, we had some solid funding from the state and a strong interest in seeing these programs kept going. Both of those seem to have gone by the wayside.
I hope the city has enough funding to give him what he wants without taking moneys from us downstaters. We've lost enough already.
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