At Dunbar High School, music students couldn’t contain their excitement when they heard they’d be getting some new band instruments.
Yamaha Corp. donated 24 timpani and five marching french horns, which will benefit students at Dunbar, Thurgood Marshall, Meadowdale and Belmont high schools, and Wright Brothers, Wogaman and Edwin Joel Brown middle schools.
“It’s everything to me personally. It’s what I live for because I love to see the switch get flipped on for kids,” said Marcia Neel, Yamaha senior director of education.
When Superintendent Elizabeth Lolli first arrived at Dayton Public Schools in 2016, music stands sat empty because there wasn’t a high school band program for a decade.
Nearly 900 students are now enrolled in the choral and instrumental music programs in grades seven through 12. The donation helps the district as it rebuilds its music program.
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“As long as I’m superintendent, it’ll be part of the regular budget. It’s an important program. It’s important that our students have something they can connect with,” Lolli said.
“Creativity is something we do very little to foster in many of our schools today because we’re so focused on the academic content standards. I believe if we would foster that creativity we would have better problem solvers, we would have better creative thinkers, better writers,” she said.