The updated co-curricular policy aims to close gaps in music literacy levels.

By Contributor Jane Boettcher

The Fine Arts department will begin enforcing its co-curricular performance ensemble policy in the 2015-16 school year, Fine Arts department chair Nicholas Janssen said.

The policy existed in previous school years, but it has been revised for next year’s implementation. It requires students to be enrolled in a curricular music class in order to participate in any competitive co-curricular (extracurricular) music ensemble, according to Janssen.

“Co-curricular music ensembles that are competitive are teaching a genre,” Janssen said. “They’re not teaching some basic elemental skills.”

Janssen estimated that in previous years almost 100 percent of the students in the co-curricular ensembles were also in curricular music classes. He estimated that recently, however, this percentage has dropped down to about 90 percent. He did not provide any definitive data to back up these estimates.

“These kids [in curricular music] are moving at a much faster rate,” Janssen said. “We never want there to be that tension to where the kids who are in curricular music feel like they’re better than the kids who aren’t.”

The co-curricular policy aims to remedy this difference in musical literacy levels, according to Janssen.

However, photography teacher Tom Arlis presented a different perspective. He said that students will have to prioritize what is most important to them, which may be a difficult decision with all the electives students can choose from.

“It’s a constant battle with the fine arts, with all the electives, to be able to draw enough students in,” Arlis said.

With proper arrangements, Janssen said students should be able to fit both the music requirement and desired elective classes into their schedules. These arrangements may include creative scheduling or even, as an exception, waiving the rule altogether.

“Exceptions are made on a case-by-case basis that just involves a conversation with that student and myself and whoever is directing the extracurricular ensemble,” Janssen said.