Cheryl Shellhart, Board President; Jim Symonds, Superintendent; Gary Scott, Board Vice President; Cheryl Wilson, Principal; Samantha Theisen, Program Administrator Visual and Performing Arts
The Music Immersion Experience program provides comprehensive music instruction to every student, every day at Roosevelt Elementary. Students receive standards-aligned instrumental, choral and general music instruction provided by highly qualified specialists who work collaboratively with the general education teachers and under the direction of the coordinator. MIE was implemented in an effort to use music as intervention, serving the high concentration of socioeconomically disadvantaged families at Roosevelt in an effort to close the achievement gap. Since initial implementation of the MIE program, Roosevelt has seen a 75-percent decrease in discipline incidents, 15-point increase in SBAC math scores and a 27-point increase in SBAC English Language Arts scores. Using programs such as El Sistema and recent brain research as inspiration, San Gabriel has successfully created an innovative and unique music program within the public school construct that has proven to be beneficial in a measurable way.