The Ledyard High School Music Department stands allied with our students from marginalized communities. We acknowledge that public education-and music education-in America has been complicit in a system that oftentimes neglects, excludes, and devalues Black, Brown, Latinx, and Indigenous people, Asian and Pacific Islanders, the LGBTQ+ community, those with disabilities, and the poor.

The following is a list of actionable steps that we will take to begin breaking down these systemic barriers. We will...

We study music as a means of connection to ourselves, each other, and the world around us. We recognize that it is imperative to program music that is representative of our whole student body and to use music to help our students gain perspective, determine their own values and beliefs, and prepare to be kind, open-minded, and anti-racist, global citizens.

We will devote adequate rehearsal and concert time to providing historical and cultural context so that students and audiences alike can have a clearer understanding of the tradition, function, and beauty of music.

We teach students of many ethnic backgrounds and cultures, and so we recognize the importance of hiring clinicians and guest artists whose backgrounds reflect our diverse student body.

As we program and explore repertoire, we will seek to hire appropriate experts and culture-bearers to help us understand the origins and traditions of that music and of the people it represents.

We will research the education and lived-experiences of composers and arrangers of ethnic music in order to program authentic and respectful treatments of that music. Whenever possible, we will make sure that the profits from the sale of that music benefit the people from its culture of origin.

We will program idiomatic and non-idiomatic music from composers and arrangers who are women, LGBTQ+, and BIPOC on every concert without tokenizing.