We Had to Cancel the Band Because We Needed Buses

Two years ago, our community came together to fund several new elementary schools. The levy passed with overwhelming community support. There was urgency, optimism, and a shared understanding that our aging, overcrowded schools needed attention.

This year, the first of two new elementary schools is open. The second school is preparing to welcome students next year. At the same time of these openings, the school board is struggling to balance next year’s budget and the superintendent has presented a proposal that is cutting the band program.

In Jefferson County, West Virginia, we’re facing a reality that sounds almost absurd: we had to cancel the band program because we needed to buy buses.

This budget decision feels like a really hard choice that has come as a surprise during the time of community growth. It feels like, somewhere along the way, we decided transportation mattered more than music. But that’s not what happened.

The real choice was made years earlier.

Two years ago, the decision to build new elementary schools made perfect sense.

Our community is growing quickly. Older school buildings were struggling with both maintenance and overcrowding. The need to respond to this growth was real. Building new schools to accommodate this and future growth felt like a logical response to this struggle. Voters approved a levy. The School Building Authority of West Virginia provided a path to financing construction. The project moved forward with broad community support.

There was also a constraint built into that process.

To qualify for state support, the district needed large parcels of land in excess of over 40 acres to meet state building planning standards. Parcels like that don’t exist in the middle of town. So like many districts across the country, our school board went to the edge of the community.

Several large tracks of land were purchased to accommodate this and future growth. Plans were drawn for the new schools with all of the latest educational amenities. The new, modern schools were built. The first school’s opening for a moment, felt like a clear win for our community.

That feeling of winning quickly faded. 

The first of the new elementary schools to open replaced a building that had been part of the town’s fabric for decades. The school was nestled in an established neighborhood where most of the students walked, and only a small number rode the bus. 

The new elementary school sits on the edge of town where there are no adjacent neighborhoods. The school board had to build the streets because there was not an existing connected street network. The location and adjacent state highways provide no practical or safe way for students to walk or bike. So at this new elementary school, every student rides the bus.

Not some. Not most. All of them.

A Single Shift Felt Logical 

That single shift of relocating the school felt logical, even necessary to respond to the pressures of growth, but that decision two years ago changed everything.

When the decision to relocate the elementary school was made, the project penciled out. Impact fees helped cover the cost of land. Grants from the School Building Authority of West Virginia along with the levy provided cheap financing for construction. On paper, the numbers worked.

But those numbers reflected a moment in time to solve the problem of growth. These numbers did not reflect the long term obligations these new buildings created. Once every student needed a bus to arrive at the school, transportation is no longer a variable cost. It becomes a fixed one.

The district now has to expand its bus fleet, hire and retain more drivers, and pay for fuel, maintenance, and eventual replacement. These aren’t optional expenses. These are annual obligations locked in by the way the system is now designed. And they don’t go away.

When budgets tighten, and they always do, those fixed costs remain. The buses still have to run to pick-up and drop-off these students.

Seeking Flexibility

So the system looks for flexibility elsewhere. It doesn’t cut transportation because it can’t. The only option is to cut people and programs.

In Jefferson County, that means eliminating assistant band director positions, reducing the capacity of high school band programs, and cutting middle school sports.

These aren’t just line items in a budget. They are opportunities for students. They are the things that make school more than just a place to attend classes.

But they are also some of the only parts of the system that can be reduced.

We didn’t cut the bus route. We cut the band director.

This wasn’t the result of a bad decision made this year. It was the result of a reasonable decision made years ago, using the tools and incentives available at the time.

The goal was clear: provide a better learning environment.

Providing a better learning environment was the goal, and in many ways, the new buildings succeed at that. These schools are modern, well-equipped, and designed to serve our growing population. But the system that delivered those buildings optimized the process for getting them built. The process did not consider sustaining everything that comes with them.

By choosing a site that made walking impossible, we didn’t just change how students get to school. We committed ourselves to a more expensive system for decades to come.

We chose a system with less flexibility, fewer options, and harder tradeoffs.

It’s tempting to frame this as a debate about priorities. Band or buses. Activities or operations. Extras or essentials. But that framing misses the point.

The real issue isn’t what we value. It’s what we’ve made non-negotiable.

Once transportation became mandatory for every student, it stopped being something we could adjust. It became a fixed obligation. One obligation that crowds out everything else.

If we want to avoid these kinds of outcomes, we have to ask a different question earlier in the process.

Not just: Can we afford to build this school?

But: What will this decision require us to sustain, year after year, for decades?

Because the most significant costs are often the ones that don’t show up at the ribbon cutting. They show up later, when the system is under pressure and the only things left to cut are the things that give it life.

We didn’t cut the band because of this year’s budget. We cut the band because, years ago, we built a school that made transportation mandatory. That was the decision that set everything else in motion.

And until we start making different decisions at that point, we’re going to keep finding ourselves in the same place. Trying to preserve the things we value most, in a system that can no longer afford them.