Revitalizing Music Education in Schools
Revitalizing Music Education in Schools
Michael Reynolds’ Classics for Kids Foundation supports string programs across the US
$8 billion. That’s the National Science Foundation’s yearly budget. Meanwhile, federal funding for the National Endowment for the Arts, which has suffered major budget reductions over the years and which the Trump administration has repeatedly called for eliminating, is around $160 million per year. And the disparity trickles down to the steady decline in funding for school arts programs, including music education.
“The budget cuts are devastating,” says Michael Reynolds, a cellist and longtime CFA professor of music. String programs, he says, are often the first to be cut because the instruments are typically more expensive and more fragile than wind and brass instruments. And often, trumpets, tubas, and trombones get priority if a school has a marching band.
Reynolds is working to change that. In 1997, he established the Classics for Kids Foundation (CFKF), a grant program that supports string programs serving rural and at-risk youth in all 50 states. The foundation’s matching grants fund high-quality string instruments, including ukuleles, guitars, and harps. At first, CFKF supported only public school programs, but the organization has grown over the years to back all types of youth music initiatives, such as those by Boys & Girls Clubs of America.
“Now, almost half of the programs we support are brand-new programs and initiatives that are springing up all over the country—it’s very exciting,” says Reynolds, who has played with the renowned Muir String Quartet since it was founded in 1979 and also works with Boston University Tanglewood Institute’s String Quartet Workshop. “I think there is a lot of developing knowledge that this sort of thing really helps kids to thrive—academically, socially, and behaviorally.”
The son of two violinists, Reynolds was always surrounded by music. His father founded Montana’s Bozeman Symphony and his mother started the now-thriving orchestra program in Bozeman’s public schools. Before his parents settled in Montana, “music life in Bozeman was pretty quiet. My parents gradually became the epicenter of that music life there,” says Reynolds. He joined the program his mother started and thought back to his own formative school orchestra experience when founding CFKF.
The foundation provides grants to 60 to 70 organizations each year, and Reynolds is in the process of setting up an endowment with the hopes of reaching even more. This year’s recipients had to contend with shifting their programming online due to the pandemic, says Reynolds, but “they all went virtual and were amazingly vibrant and active. Nobody shut down.”
What is most fulfilling for Reynolds is hearing from the students that CFKF grants have benefited.
“I heard from a student living in a community with gun violence who said playing the violin makes them feel safe. Giving that kind of positive experience to a kid can be truly transforming,” he says. “We are seeing how playing an instrument helps give kids a sense of meaning and joy in sometimes very tough personal, family, and community circumstances. That’s exactly what I was hoping would happen from the beginning. I’m very proud of what we are doing.”
Learn more about the Classics for Kids Foundation at classicsforkids.org.
