Introduction
Studies have indicated that supporting music and art in high school education is very crucial since it enhance the performance of the students as well as boosting the morale of the teachers. It is important to enhance the professionalism of the music teachers by supporting them to acquire the much needed skill, supporting the schools by equipping them with the required instruments and supporting the students to develop interest to learn the music. For many years, curriculum and funding institution have continued to marginalize music as a subject as well as undermine the professionalism of the music teachers.
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Statement of the purpose
However, recent studies indicated that several foundations have been established to support music and art in high school education. These foundations have different eligibility requirements that applications must fulfill in order to get the grant. Most teacher lack information about these foundations and as a result they do not know how to go about when seeking for these grants. Therefore, this informational report intends to provide the teachers with the information about the foundations that offer support and grants to music teachers and the schools
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Scope of this report
This report focused only on foundations that support music in K-12 grades.
Foundations
The foundations that support music in K-12 are:
New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival and Foundation, Inc.
The mission of this foundation is to “To promote, preserve, perpetuate and encourage the music, culture and heritage of communities in Louisiana through festivals, programs and other cultural, educational, civic and economic activities (New Orlean Jazz & Heritage Festival and Foundation, INC.). New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival and Foundation, Inc. offer grants that support music and art education during the school day in Louisiana K-12 schools.
Purpose
The purpose of this grants is to support music and art in K-12 schools located within the jurisdiction of Louisiana. The grant specifically targets K-12 schools that offer music and art education programs during regular school hours. The grants supports music and art disciplines falling under the following categories: music, dance, theater, visual arts, literature, culinary arts, cultural traditions, and folk life and media arts. The school who qualify for this grant can use the fund to purchase the musical instruments, repair the instruments, and acquire supplies such as visual art materials, sheet music as well as other materials necessary for music and arts instructions (New Orlean Jazz & Heritage Festival and Foundation, INC.). The finance cannot be used to settle the salaries of the art or music teachers who are in the school payroll, but they can be used to pay for the fee of visiting clinicians or teaching artists for programs during the school day.
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Eligibility requirements
The first eligibility requirement for this grants is that only application from schools that offer music or art programs during the regular school day at K-12 both public and private. These public and private school must come within the jurisdiction of the Louisiana. However, commercial and individual organizations are not eligible to this grants. The applications are required to submit a detailed music or art programs including the total amount the school spends on music or art instructions during the school day annually (New Orlean Jazz & Heritage Festival and Foundation, INC.). Also, the grant allows the private school falling under tuition, tuition waiver, reduced or reduced-cost lunch category to apply. In their application, they must provide the percentage of the students under scholarship or partial/full tuition waiver program and the cost of tuition annually. Only one application per school accompanied by letter on the school’s letterhead and signed by board chair, chief administrative officer or school’s principal.
Activity schedule and funding amount
The current grant intend to fund only activities running between 1st September, 2017 and 31st August, 2018. The Jazz & Heritage Foundation grant fund music or art programs in K-12 school in Louisiana to maximum of $5,000.
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The mockingbird foundation
The mockingbird foundation is a non-profit organization that support music education for children in 48 states. This foundation was founded by the Phish fans in 1996 and was commission in 1997 to generate charitable proceeds from the Phish community. The foundation have manage to distribute more than $1 million to school to support music education for children (The Mockingbird Foundation). The mockingbird foundation receive funds from philanthropies which include direct donations from individuals, portion of Livephish proceeds, strategic partnerships, branded merchandise accessible from Phish.net Store and HomeGrown, special events unique donation premiums and the phish companion.
Purpose
The purpose of the grants offered by the mockingbird foundation is facilitate schools to acquire instrument and hire professionals to teach the children music from within the 48 states. The grant specifically targets children who are in the K-12 level.
Eligibility requirements
Unlike the Jazz & Heritage foundation that targets only music or art programs offered during regular school hours, the mockingbird foundation is open to all applicants (The Mockingbird Foundation). Although, the grant is open to all application from the 48 states, schools that targets students from marginalized communities such as the Latinos and African American stand a better consideration.
Muzak Heart & Soul Foundation
Purpose
The mission of this grant is to support music education in K-12 education. Studies have indicated that music education helps the children to realize their full potential as well as stimulating educational and personal growth (Muzak Heart & Soul Foundation). The grant focuses on supporting schools and non-profit music program across the United States. The grant are normally awarded in April of each year and funds distributed at the end of every year.
Eligibility requirements
The first eligibility requirement considered in this grant is music education that focuses on instrumental and vocal. The most targeted public schools or charter school programs are those serving students from 50 % low-income (Muzak Heart & Soul Foundation). These are students who are categorized as receiving reduced or free lunch. Also, students categorized under non-profit/501(c) (3) programs which directly fund the music education for students without considering whether these students have the ability to pay.
For a school to qualify for this grant, they must indicated in their application that music program/curriculum has been in place. However, this program does not fund salaries for regular music instructors. Nonetheless, this grant allows the successful applications to use the funds to pay stipends as well as performance fees for the musicians and instructors (Muzak Heart & Soul Foundation). In addition, the applicants must clear explain how their existing and planned music program improves the education of the students. As a result, total organization budget, proposed project budget as well as music program budget must be included in the application. Finally, the existing and proposed music education program must meet the national standard non-discrimination policies and serves the students on K-12 grades.
The Mr. Holland’s Opus Foundation
The purpose
The main purpose of the foundation is to donate musical instruments to schools across the United States of America (The Mr. Holland’s Opus Foundation). However, the donation focus on schools from low income communities. With the help of the committed school district, the support of the foundation has been included as part of the wider district plan for K-12 grades.
Goals
The goals of the foundation is to ensures that students from economically disadvantage families get accessed to music programs, eliminate the sharing of mouthpiece and musical instruments by students hence increasing the practice and adds instructions time, replacing the aged instrument hence enhancing progression, learning and student engagement, sustaining K-12 music education programs across the United States, increasing community engagement (The Mr. Holland’s Opus Foundation). Overall objectives of the foundation is to increase the graduation rate, school attendance and music student’s academic achievement.
Eligibility requirements
The first requirement that foundation considers is whether the school serves not less than 65 % of the school population from the economically disadvantage society. The second consideration is that the school must have already established instrumental music program that is applicable on a regular school days. The instrumental program include modern band, jazz band, keyboard labs, guitar, mariachi, strings and bands (The Mr. Holland’s Opus Foundation). The third consideration is that the school must have qualify instrumental music teacher with experience of two consecutive years. The fourth requirement is that the school must have inventory of instrument. Lastly, the school must have a dedicated instrumental music room with adequate and secure storage for musical instruments.
Summary
Based on the information available on the website of these foundation it is clear that each foundation have unique eligibility requirements. The applicants should ensure that they read the application guideline thoroughly in order to include all the requirements in the application. In the case where various people needs to sign the application forms, it is important for the applicants to ensure that the form is fully signed as require. In conclusion, this information is very important because more music teachers and schools needs to access this information in order to assist their students get the required music program. All the foundations insisted that all the applicants should explain in detail the existing music program and how the program intends to assist students realize their full potentials, personal and educational growth. This means that the grants aims at helping the students to prosper in their education and life.
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