Help us match a $10,000 Challenge Grant!

An anonymous Portola Valley couple is offering a $10,000 match to help us preserve instrumental music for our middle school students. Every dollar you give before September 12, 2011 earns a dollar up to $10,000 for a total contribution of $20,000!

Help us meet this challenge by sending your check, payable to the Redwood City Education Foundation, to:
RCEF
PO Box 3046
Redwood City, CA 94064

Or click here to give on line.

Please enter "SOSM Match" in the designation field.

WITHOUT YOUR HELP, OUR SCHOOLS WILL FALL SILENT

With your help we were able to raise $90,000 last year to help keep the Instrumental Music program alive for our middle school students. Now we must act once again to save this critical program so that our students don't lose all the academic, cognitive, and social development benefits that come with learning to play an instrument in a group.

Please help us with your gift of time or money today!

Music Videos

See our kids on Youtube!

NEWS & UPDATES

RCEF raises $4,000 at Districtwide Music Festival

Parents and family enjoyed a evening of jazz, band, and orchestra numbers May 16, 2011, thanks to our district's brilliant and talented music students and their equally phenomenal teachers. In addition to giving up their applause, audience members gave generously to our Save Our School Music campaign, raising $4,000 in all. We thank our students, teachers, and parents for helping keep music alive for our kids!

Rescue Music 911 Campaign

All three music teaching positions have
been eliminated from Redwood City School District’s 2011-12 school year. The reluctant vote by the Board of Trustees on Wednesday night, May 11, effectively silences instrumental music for nearly 800 students in grades 6 through 8. Most keenly affected are the district’s low-income students, estimated at about 75 percent of program participants, for whom music is often the one bright spot in their day as well as an enhancer of academic, cognitive, and social development skills. Read our press release

Music Alive and Well in Schools Thanks to Community-Based Effort — The Spectrum, November 2010

RCEF Parade Entry Wins Prize!

The first ever Save Our School Music Marching Kazoo Band rocked the 2010 4th of July Parade route with stirring renditions of the Rocky theme and Yankee Doodle. The band took 2nd prize in the category Miscellaneous Novelty Youth Group. The band also carried a banner to let the thousands in the audience know about the RCEF and our music campaign.

See more news from 2010 Spring SOSM Campaign!

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WHY MUSIC IS SO IMPORTANT

Fast Facts about RCSD Instrumental Music Program

Fast Facts About Music Benefits for Students

What Our RCSD Alumnae Say

For many of our children, the instrumental music program is literally their only opportunity to learn how to play an instrument. Without this program few of them will be able to continue on to study music in the upper grades, which will see the inevitable decimation of high school bands and other youth music opportunities in our community.

Countless studies have documented the benefit of music instruction when it comes to improving academic and social skills. Beyond mere achievement however lies the reality that music is one of our most fundamental forms of human self expression. Every culture in the world has music at its center, and it is an artform that crosses social, economic, and linguistic borders. An education that deprives children of the skills to use and appreciate this most basic form of creative expression is an education that fails.

Please help us give our children the education they need to succeed -- join our campaign to save the music in Redwood City. Become a volunteer, spread the word, or make your contribution today!

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MUSIC INFORMATION & RESOURCES

RCEF Publications

"Keep our students playing!" Flyer

"Imagine a world without music" Flyer

Fast Facts about Instrumental Music Instruction in RCSD

Fast Facts About Music and Students

Facts About the History of Instrumental Music in RCSD

What Our RCSD Alumnae Say

Other Publications

Critical Evidence: How the ARTS Benefit Student Achievement

"Why Music and Arts Education" Community School of Music and Arts

OTHER RESOURCES

Americans for the Arts

American Music Conference

California Alliance for Arts Education

Children’s Music Workshop presents Music Education Online

Community School of Music and Arts

Keep Arts In Schools

National Association for Music Education

Support Music

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"Music puts a smile on my face. I have a lot of friends I’ve met because of band. My grades have gone up. I’m on the honor roll now. Music makes me feel smart."
Kennedy Middle School Student

"If I were not a physicist, I would probably be a musician ... I get most joy in life out of music." Albert Einstein

"We learn to work together as a group. We have to learn to balance tones and play in tune and play notes at the right time so we don’t mess everyone up. It takes a lot of skill." Kennedy Middle School Student

"Students in high-quality school music programs score higher on standardized tests compared to students in schools with deficient music education programs, regardless of the socioeconomic level of the school or school district." Nina Kraus Professor of Neurobiology, Northwestern University

"Without the people that come from Redwood City our band would be much smaller and we may not have enough students to have a band at our high school." Sequoia High School Music Student