Washington school district to cut music classes for promoting 'white supremacy' and 'institutional violence'

A Washington school district recently announced that it plans to cut music classes for promoting "white supremacy" and "institutional violence."

Olympia School District, which comprises 19 schools that enroll nearly 10,000 students, held a school board meeting last week in which board members voted to eliminate the district's music classes.

During a three-hour meeting on April 13, the board discussed cutting fourth- and fifth-grade band and orchestra classes to accommodate that district's $11.5 million budget shortfall and combat racism.

School board director Scott Clifthorne explained that the district's elementary instrumental music courses were disproportionally administered at each campus.

"We know that people experience different amounts of time of elementary instrumental music education," Clifthorne stated. "We know that there are some places where students never miss core instruction as a result of going to instrumental music, and we know that there are other campuses where that's a struggle."

The school board director added that the OSD "is entrenched in and is surrounded by white supremacy culture."

He added that there is nothing "intrinsically white supremacist" about string or wind instrumental music but that the courses have the potential to push a racist culture within the district.

"The ways in which it is and the ways in which all of our institutions — not just schools, but local government, state government, our churches, our neighborhoods — inculcate and allow white supremacy culture to continue to be propagated and caused significant institutional violence are things that we have to think about carefully as a community," Clifthorne said.

Alesha Perkins, a parent with three children enrolled in the district, told Fox News Digital that OSD has "reached a level of absurdity" that is difficult to ignore.

"We are losing students in huge numbers," Perkins explained. "I'm not talking about a handful of students. I'm talking about hundreds and hundreds of students that are exiting the district, and they are virtually all citing these results. You cannot sustain a school district with a mass exodus of students. I mean, it's just not sustainable for funding or anything else."

According to a district spokesperson, the cuts would not apply to any secondary music courses but only a music elective.

"It is having a disparate impact across our schools on students who choose to participate in band and strings and on those who choose not to," the spokesperson told the New York Post. "The 'opportunity' offered to all forces choices between things like lunch, recess or intervention time and this 'opportunity' disrupts our teachers' ability to teach all kids in their classes academic content in an already packed school day."

The school board plans to hold two more meetings to address next year's budget.

Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!