After orchestra teacher Emily Chmielewski left, her role was left unfilled. In her absence, the program has all but fallen apart. With the fate of orchestra unclear, what will happen to the class this year?

Music classes at Benilde-St. Margaret’s have critically low student enrollment, which is even more impactful when you take into account that orchestra has always been the smallest of the three music classes at BSM. In past years, the orchestra class combined senior and junior high students to keep the class open. Due to the inflexible junior high schedule, the class was limited to sixth hour, causing trouble for the students involved. “I am willing to do whatever needs to be done to keep the orchestra program here because I think it is important that we have as many different kinds of music classes as possible to allow everybody the chance to become a part of the music department, should they want to,” band teacher Josie Gruba said.

One week prior to the start of school, music teachers Gruba and Augsburger discovered that there was no replacement for Chmielewski. Gruba was open to teaching the class but the scheduling restraints made it impossible as she teaches concert band sixth hour. Augsberger has a diverse musical background and considered stepping in to teach, but due to her lack of expertise on the subject, she decided to stick with choir. “I would not feel like a good teacher, because a lot of teaching an instrument class, is knowing how the instrument works and knowing how to fix it, and especially tune it, I saw Chmielewski’s orchestra, and a lot of the time she was fixing and tuning the instruments, and I have no idea how to do that,” Augsberger said.

The BSM webpage still advertises orchestra as an available course, but there might not be an orchestra at all this year. Due to the struggle to find an orchestra teacher, they opted to postpone the class to second semester. This would allow the school time to find a replacement. With no orchestra class, students lose an opportunity to practice their music, participate in their community, and improve their musical skills. “We need to continue to have orchestra, because we’ve got many students who play string instruments, and we should have an opportunity [available for them]. We’ve told parents in our community that we do have an orchestra. And so I think it’s important for it to happen,” Augsberger said.