It shouldn’t take a celebrity to save jazz in Seattle schools

First, give credit where credit is due: As reported earlier this week, music impresario Quincy Jones, who soared to international fame after graduating from Garfield High School, is donating $50,000 to help Seattle Public Schools pay for a jazz program that had been under the ax due to budget cuts.

But John Nesholm and his family foundation, while not as famous as Jones, will be throwing in quite a bit more.

Though Seattle Public Schools has not yet named the total price, the Nesholm Family Foundation committed to funding the entire salary and benefits for one of two jazz teachers at Washington Middle School, saving the program this year. The family will also kick in two-thirds of that cost in 2024-25, and another third in 2025-26, to help keep jazz going.

One wonders if this kind of 11th-hour rescue was what school board members had in mind when they approved a hefty labor contract last fall, knowing it would create the $131 million budget hole where Seattle’s 50,000 students now teeter: Whip families into such a panic at the prospect of losing a treasured program that some generous soul (or souls) will be compelled to step forward — because that’s exactly what happened.

“It’s a moment of crisis, and we want stability,” John Nesholm said.

Seattle has lots of similarly successful people who understand how essential the arts are to education, and how imperiled. But this game of chicken is no way to run a school district.

Further, these comparatively inexpensive programs have benefits that can ripple through entire communities — in Jones’ case, across the entire world. “For the first time in my life, I felt no loneliness, no pain, no fear, but rather joy, relief, and even understanding,” Jones once wrote, describing his first time at a piano keyboard. “From the moment I plinked those notes and laid down those first chords, I finally found something real to trust.”

A phalanx of students made comparable pleas to the school board last spring, begging them to save jazz at Washington Middle School. It was painful to watch and in a city as wealthy as Seattle, embarrassing.

At bottom, these problems are structural. They stem from a school-funding system tied to student enrollment figures, but bound by salary contracts that operate separately. It is the unenviable job of administrators and board members to design spending plans that align these factors — not to cry wolf and place families in a perennial panic hoping that a guardian angel steps forward.