KVIG Informative

Helen Marie Smith Elementary has had its music program cut before and clawed it back before. This time, the school’s only music teacher is on the chopping block, and the principal is racing to find the money before the position disappears for good.

Clark County School District identified the music program at Helen Marie Smith Elementary School for elimination as part of a $21.9 million budget adjustment this fall, driven by lower-than-projected enrollment and higher-than-anticipated employee costs across the district.

Sarah Sunassy, a teacher at the west Las Vegas school, said the cuts affect four licensed positions at Smith Elementary — three in regular classrooms and one in the music and arts program — along with two instructional aide positions and a reduction of the school’s site-based technician to half-time.

Smith Elementary has only one music teacher, according to Sunassy, meaning the position being eliminated effectively ends the program entirely rather than reducing it. Sunassy said the school’s status as a Title I campus, meaning a high share of its students live at or below the poverty line, makes the stakes particularly high: for many students, the elementary music classroom is their only exposure to music education.

This marks the third time in recent years that Smith Elementary has faced a budget cut, according to district enrollment data, with the school’s enrollment having declined steadily since 2021.

The school’s principal has filed a request for additional funding specifically to preserve the music teacher’s position and the program itself, according to Sunassy, though the outcome of that appeal remained undetermined as of this reporting.

Not every CCSD school has been affected equally by the district’s budget shortfall this fall, with cuts concentrated most heavily at campuses that saw the steepest enrollment declines relative to what the district had projected.

Smith Elementary’s music program has survived two previous rounds of cuts. Whether it survives a third now depends on whether one principal’s funding appeal lands before the only teacher who runs it is reassigned somewhere else.