Thirty grand buys a lot of music.
That money recently was awarded to the Stearne Elementary School in Frankford by the VH1 Save the Music Foundation. The funding will pay for eight flutes, 11 clarinets, three alto saxophones, six trumpets, four trombones, one bell kit, one snare drum, one bass drum, one bass-drum stand, one bass-drum beater and one cymbal kit, said Cheryl Arpa, social-work service coordinator at the school on Unity Street.
The instruments will be firsts at Stearne. “We have a full-time music teacher,” Arpa said, “but we’ve never had instruments.”
Virginia T. Lam, the School District of Philadelphia project manager for regional talent centers, recommended Stearne for the VH1 grant, Arpa said.
Additionally, Stearne’s principal, Darlene Vaughn, was among seven city principals who won the Christian R. and Mary Lindback Foundation’s Distinguished Principal Leadership Award during the previous school year. In April, the school district said Vaughn would use some of that award’s $10,000 stipend for instruments and choir gowns for her pupils.
ldquo;We are a small school, but we have big dreams for our children,” Arpa said. ••
