A West Las Vegas Elementary School Has Lost Its Music Program Three Times — This Time It May Not Come Back
Helen Marie Smith Elementary's only music teacher is among the positions identified for elimination in a $21.9 million Clark County School District budget adjustment. The program has survived two earlier rounds of cuts; this time, a principal's funding appeal is the only thing standing in the way.
The music room at Helen Marie Smith Elementary has been here before, and that is the problem. The Clark County School District has identified the west Las Vegas school's music program for elimination as part of a $21.9 million budget adjustment this fall, driven by lower-than-projected enrollment and higher-than-anticipated employee costs across the district, according to the KVIG report read by the desk. It is the third time in recent years the program has faced the cut, and the school's enrollment has declined steadily since 2021.
At Smith, the adjustment is not a trim. Teacher Sarah Sunassy told the outlet the cuts affect four licensed positions at the school — three in regular classrooms and one in the music and arts program — along with two instructional aide positions and a reduction of the school's site-based technician to half-time. Smith has only one music teacher, so eliminating that position ends the program entirely rather than shrinking it. Sunassy pointed to the school's Title I status — a high share of its students live at or below the poverty line — as the reason the stakes run higher here: for many of those students, the elementary music classroom is their only exposure to music education.
What happens next is a race between an appeal and a reassignment. The school's principal has filed a request for additional funding specifically to preserve the music teacher's position, according to Sunassy, but the outcome remained undetermined in the reporting read by the desk. Not every CCSD campus has been hit equally — the cuts are concentrated at schools with the steepest enrollment declines against projections. Smith's program has clawed its way back twice before; whether it survives a third time depends on whether that appeal lands before the only teacher who runs it is reassigned somewhere else.
