I'm Rex Holloway. I'm a journalist, and I've been reporting on what's happening to music education in Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Schools.

Students are coming home and telling their parents that orchestra is being cut. Not scaled back. Cut. No letter from the school. No announcement. No meeting. Just kids at dinner telling their parents what the district won't say out loud.

WSFCS is facing a $46 million budget deficit. The district has cut 343 positions. Schools are running out of basic supplies mid-year.

Meanwhile, more than $75 million in administrative bonuses were paid out in recent years. The paper ran out. The orchestra is being cut. The kids found out before the parents did.

Middle school orchestra is the feeder program. Cut it now and you don't need to cut the high school programs — they die on their own in three to five years. No announcement. No one to blame. Just a pipeline that quietly ran dry.

Every dollar raised here goes directly toward keeping these programs alive — instruments, instruction, and the path forward for kids in Forsyth County who haven't had their chance yet.

If you have a child in WSFCS, or a public school once put an instrument in your hands and told you that you could — this one's for you.

— Rex Holloway, Spotlight Dispatch