Heather Richards
City Times
Often in public schools the kids without means go without. For a lot of kids in San Diego the opportunities, specifically in the arts, are minimal at best because money is limited at home and in their school system.
A project, “Music Matters,” started by Mark DeBoskey of City College’s radio station KSDS 88.3, is moving into its fourth year collecting donated musical instruments for the Community Council for Music in Schools (CCMS) who in turn refurbish and loan them out to children in musical education programs across the county.
“I stole it,” DeBoskey says of the idea to use a radio station as a means to assist and promote musical education. Working in tandem with Coles Fine Flooring, KSDS is a means of publicity for the wider program and more recently has become a place for donations to be dropped.
Sixty San Diego schools have benefited from CCMS donations with almost 600 instruments being filtered into schools. Since, “Music Matters,” became involved in 2005, 170 instruments have been donated, according to a, “Music Matters,” press release.
“They donate because its important for young people to have this opportunity…hundreds of students would be left out,” says Ann Marie Haney co-head of CCMS. Haney is a direct link between the council and the schools. Many of the schools and their students are in economically depressed areas such as South East San Diego. Still, the program is far reaching meant to assist individuals rather than districts and neighborhoods.
There is still a greater body of need than CCMS and, “Music Matters,” can provide for. “Anytime there is a student (who) comes by who wants to play a violin or a trumpet… I get a phone call,” says Mrs. Haney. So, when there are not enough instruments to go around, it’s “heartbreaking.”
CCMS is a non-profit organization working out of the San Diego State University Foundation to promote music as a viable and available source of expression to children from elementary to high school. Some fifty private music organizations, such as Jazz 88.3 are part of the CCMS program.
Donations can be made at any Coles Flooring or at the Jazz 88.3 office on City College Campus rm. C-125 from Feb. 1 to Feb. 29.
