Grady Goods Artpunk Gallery owner Jae Grady has played the guitar since he was 12 years old. Now, music is a big part of his 13-year-old son’s life. He’s a trombone player in a band at Western Middle School for the Arts.
Recently, Grady discovered 11 kids in his son’s band class don’t have an instrument. He said didn’t find out about this from school administrators, the band director or a parent newsletter.
“I had to find that out on a Reddit thread,” Grady said. “It's got to feel [mortifying] to be in band and show up and you've got no instrument.”
LPM News reached out to administrators at Western Middle School and has not yet heard back.
Grady and many other parents touted their concerns on social media for the future of music education at Kentucky’s largest school district. A new funding strategy implemented earlier this school year could change how much funding music departments receive. Some parents and students are wondering whether this could harm their school music programs as the district faces down a major deficit.
Follow the money
In previous years, the Music Instructional Lead — a group from JCPS’ central office — oversaw funding dedicated to all district music programs. Historically, the group set aside $440,000 for school instrument requests district-wide, according to Taylor Everrett with the Jefferson County Board of Education. The funds were allocated based on music departments’ requests and each school could request more from the district when necessary. Everett said he learned about this system from a central office letter dated Sept. 11, 2025.
No funds were set aside at the district level for other arts-related departments including visual and performing arts, health and physical education and world language, according to the letter.
This school year, that changed.
District leadership created a system that allows JCPS principals to divvy up hundreds of thousands of dollars among four departments: visual and performing arts, health and physical education, world language and music.
They spread $1,827,120 among all 169 schools evenly. Everett explained the money does not have to be divided equally throughout all departments.
“The issue is the principals are not required to use it all on music. It is only for the arts overall,” Everett said.
For music departments, district funds pay for instrument repairs, purchasing new instruments and sheet music. Everett said some music teachers had raised concerns about the lack of resources for their students this year.
“They were like, ‘Hey, I'm not getting as much money to fix my instruments anymore,’” Everett said. “And it's a totally different process. And their concern is one, they have less money. But two, they don't feel like they were notified correctly that change was happening and that the principals had the discretion to not use the funds on them.”
Everett said the district's central office is expected to meet with school teachers to discuss this new system and “see if anything needs to be changed.” That meeting will be sometime next week.
According to a district spokesperson Carolyn Callahan, funding for district-wide music education “is already in place,” and the new system will ensure “equitable support” for arts-related programs.
Everett said this should not affect staffing in music departments.
“It wasn't like it's getting rid of any music programs,” he said. “There's nothing that affects the music teachers in the schools or the orchestra teachers. All of those have been allocated. [Nobody] expects those classes going away.”
Making ‘aggressive cuts’
In an Aug. 25 letter to JCPS staff posted on Reddit and verified by LPM News, Superintendent Brian Yearwood said the district is working to address its $100 million budget deficit.
At last week’s board meeting, the board finalized the 2025-2026 working budget. Chief Financial Officer Eddie Muns said JCPS will run out of cash and must make “aggressive cuts” to its assets by October 2026.
“It’s going to require some hard decisions, some very unpopular decisions,” Yearwood said.
The move to cut assets came as a shock to the school board, according to board chair Corrie Shull. He said the board was not made aware before the meeting that the district would have to do this.
Shull told LPM News that he is starting to lose trust in district leadership.
“My distrust began when the board was not made aware of these larger financial decisions. We have to know that,” he said.
Eastern High School sophomore Hunter Wells said he worries about what could happen to music education district-wide, given JCPS’ looming financial crisis. Wells plays the trumpet in the school’s symphonic band.
“There's just no reason music programs should have to struggle to have money for the year and just barely make it,” he said.
Wells said music has taught him how to be a leader and a professional musician, and he shared his worries for music education in the district on social media.
“It’s bad enough that the arts programs in a school district with a budget higher than some can count can’t get a good budget for every year when it’s a department, a field that students will make their futures with and possibly become professionals with. JCPS is limiting the futures of students and it is unacceptable,” he wrote on Facebook.
Grady said, if he had known sooner, he and other JCPS parents would have found a way to get instruments for the students in need.
“At the very least, let the parents know like, ‘Look, we don't have it in the budget right now. These instruments that were normally offered to students aren't there.’ Just at least make the parents aware that we have 11 kids here. Anybody who wants to chip in can go ahead and cover this, but we weren't even made aware of that,” he said.
Shull, who has two children in JCPS schools, said funding problems in music education goes back to 2019. When his son was a 7th grade band student at W.E.B. DuBois Academy, the band director announced he was leaving.
“At first I thought, ‘Oh well, they’ll probably find someone new soon,’” Shull said.
But no one replaced the instructor and the students had to disband.
“It was unexpected,” Shull said. “And my son lost interest in playing his instrument all together.”
Grady said he feels music education is often “the first to go” when a school district needs to cut back on spending.
