On Oct. 2, Saratoga High School music director Jason Shiuan announced the cancellation of the school’s annual concerto competition. The decision was the latest in a series of adjustments affecting the school’s music department—and Saratoga Music Boosters (SMB), the parent-run nonprofit founded in 1972 that supports it.
International trips and the March ensemble festival have been axed for the upcoming year. SMB’s annual cookie dough fundraiser and pancake breakfast, and the school’s lunchtime Falcon Choir, have faced new advertising restrictions.
These changes arrived after a rift opened up a couple years back between Shiuan and fellow music director Michael Boitz on one side, and Los Gatos-Saratoga Union School District Superintendent Bill W. Sanderson on the other.
In August, parents learned the school would no longer be hosting the California Music Educators Association (CMEA) Bay Section’s annual large ensemble festival in March, which has been held at the school’s McAfee Center for Performing Arts since 2005.
CMEA, a judged festival, is how schools assess whether its ensembles are meeting national music education standards, such as for sight-reading and other performance metrics. This spring, the school hosted 44 groups from 15 middle and high schools.
According to Boitz, the District wanted to require CMEA to pay additional costs, including facility rental. This practice isn’t followed at other nearby schools, including Gunn High School in Palo Alto, where another CMEA festival is held, Shiuan said. CMEA, a nonprofit, said this would make it financially unfeasible and took a pass on hosting under these conditions.
The District told the Los Gatan it “values the music program at both Los Gatos and Saratoga High Schools and the opportunities it offers our students,” and says the CMEA festival was flagged during a recent audit. “We learned that allowing an outside organization to use our facilities is a gift of public funds (cost of custodial and technical staff) and irresponsible toward our community members who rely on us to be fiscally responsible,” a District spokesperson said. “Under the Civic Center Act, the District waived the facility use fee and only asked CMEA to pay for custodial and McAfee technical staffing, as is requested with other programs who use our facilities at both our schools.”
Shiuan said it’s now too late to participate in CMEA at a separate venue due to scheduling conflicts. Boitz says it’s the first time in the history of the school that Saratoga students won’t be taking part.
Administrators also raised concerns over the school’s annual concerto competition in December. That’s the big event where students perform solo pieces for professional adjudicators. “If a student is trying out for the concerto competition, they’ve been preparing and preparing for years,” Boitz said. “So, I treat this with the utmost sincerity, and I can’t stand by and watch it get treated so flippantly.”
‘You Can’t just change the Rules of the game like that’
—Michael Boitz, Instrumental Music Program head at Saratoga High School
Up until this year, the music program has asked judges to sign an “Independent Contractor for Professional Services Agreement” to ensure safety and liability. However, in March the District notified its Saratoga music directors that those forms weren’t going to cut it anymore.
Boitz, who judges many of these competitions in nearby districts such as the East Side Union High School District, doesn’t see anything wrong with the documents they’ve been using, adding they are similar to ones used at neighboring schools. Discussions between Saratoga’s music program and LGSUHSD officials over the summer didn’t prove fruitful.
On Oct. 2 the music program announced its decision to cancel the concerto competition, after multiple slates of judges dropped out.
“You can’t just change the rules of the game like that. Once the school year starts,” Boitz said. “The train is going 500 miles per hour, and (the District) can’t just change the direction it’s going in.”
Two days after the cancellation, the District finally announced it had produced a new form.
The District says it’s been working to update its contract templates to comply with Assembly Bill 130, which requires criminal background checks for employees of entities that have contracts with school districts who will interact with students. “The first two pages of the contract are similar and boilerplate legal contract language,” District spokesperson Tanya De La Cruz said. “District staff recently developed the 3rd page, which allows the fingerprinting process to be waived by a site administrator or designee for contracted workers, like judges, who are under the immediate supervision of a cleared school employee.”
When approached by the Los Gatan on Monday, Sanderson said the issue just wasn’t on his radar until recently.
“I don’t think we knew about it,” he said.
It’s not just the large-scale events that have run into problems in recent months.
In late September, administrators told Saratoga High’s choral director Beth Nitzan she couldn’t promote her lunchtime “Friday Falcon Choir” program through flyers, as they contained mention of free pizza. She was told this would violate National School Lunch Program guidelines meant to shield students from corporations seeking to advertise unhealthy food to youth.
‘There has to be some logic when you make these changes’
—Alicia De Fuentes, Saratoga Music Boosters president
On Oct. 2, administrators told Shiuan that flyers for SMB’s annual cookie dough and pancake breakfast fundraisers were not allowed to be displayed outdoors for the same reason.
“If you start crippling the possibility for outreach, what you’re doing to your own students and school is crippling the opportunity for SMB to offer more,” said Alicia De Fuentes, president of SMB, in an interview with the Los Gatan on Sunday. “There has to be some logic when you make these changes.”
According to the District’s official policy (Policy 1325: Advertisements and Promotion), advertising materials that “Promote during the school day any food or beverage that does not comply with state nutritional standards” aren’t allowed on school property. However, the policy also states that “This prohibition does not include advertising…advertising of infrequent school fundraising events involving food or beverages that do not meet the nutritional standards.”
Sanderson says he was unaware of the issue, as it falls under the jurisdiction of the District’s Food Services Department, which was not fully staffed. It’s unclear how strictly the District plans to enforce this new publicity rule.
“We are working on seeing where communications were missed and then rolling out the rules and explaining everything,” De La Cruz said.
She added the District was out of compliance with AB 841, which went into effect in 2018. Per federal rules, she explained, the only food and beverage items that can be marketed or advertised on campus and during the school day are those that meet the competitive food standards.
“Flyers may still be distributed both digitally and in person, however posting flyers is not allowed,” she said. “The passage of this law added on to the Board Policy and Education Code…requiring that schools who participate in the National School Lunch Program to follow certain food and beverage advertising practices. We are currently in the process of scheduling a community meeting on this topic in the near future to improve the understanding and background of this change in practice.”
Shiuan says the lack of notice and transparency from the District on various issues has contributed to a “competitive relationship” between the music community and the administration.
According to De Fuentes, these problems don’t seem to crop up with Saratoga Union School District (SUSD) and its superintendent, Kenneth Geisick.
“With SUSD, we have a fabulous relationship,” De Fuentes said. “Whatever problem I have, we sit together and problem-solve. And we’re always working for positive results.”
On the other hand, she says she just can’t seem to establish a line of communication with Sanderson. She’s only been able to talk directly with two assistant superintendents at LGSUHSD—Deepa Mukherjee, who’s in charge of curriculum and instruction, and Heath Rocha, the assistant superintendent of student services.
“I think music departments and all the activities we have need to be thriving programs,” Sanderson said. “I believe that we have had significant growth in the program at Los Gatos High School, and I think we have an excellent program at Saratoga.”
Parents haven’t been convinced. They made their voices heard at an open-mic meeting at the Saratoga High library, Monday morning.
“How many hours did (attorneys) spend reviewing a contract and making a new contract that looks exactly the same?” asked parent Nedda Ashjaee, referring to the independent contractor agreement for the concerto competition. “(Sanderson) is spending our funds on (his) own salaries when it should be going to teachers. And (he) doesn’t even know the problems facing our district.”
For Boitz, who has worked at the school for more than 25 years, his battles have gotten especially difficult. Living with his husband and twin sons in Los Gatos, he was recently diagnosed with squamous cell carcinoma. He often wonders if he’ll live to see his children turn eight. Yet, he continues to advocate for the music department. He says he, too, would like to see better communication and transparency from the top education official.
“Nothing matters to me more right now than doing the right thing for my kids,” said Boitz. “And my students at Saratoga High are just as much my children.”
*In an earlier version of this story, Nedda Ashjaee’s name was misspelled.
