Westford Academy Salsa Band will not be available for students to join during the 2025-2026 year due to budgetary and staff constraints. The decision comes after the district-wide budget cuts in the 2023–2024 school year forced the Westford Academy Visual and Performing Arts (VPA) department to lose its orchestra teacher Zach Sawyer.
“When we went from having three music teachers to two in the music department, some of our offerings shifted a little bit,” VPA curriculum coordinator Andrea Mejia said.
WA Salsa Band was started in 2023 by class of 2025 graduate Lara Rodrigues, and it served the dual purpose of being a casual music club and one of WA’s two non-classical music clubs alongside the WA Jazz Band.
“Salsa Band [was] generally seen as more of an intro level [band], as in, anyone can join,” former Salsa Band president and senior Graysen Chen said. “Last year, actually, [senior] Sarah St George joined and just played some ox percussion for us, which was really great. She had no prior percussion experience. You [did not] need to have any music experience to be part of Salsa Band. It [allowed] people to get experience with and to be able to participate in music in a club setting where there’s much less pressure and there’s much less stress involved.”
According to Chen, although Salsa Band had a smaller membership than other music programs, he felt that the decision to stop running the club had significant negative effects on the WA community.
“I know we have plenty of people at this school who would feel represented by the music [Salsa Band] makes,” Chen said. “It just feels wrong to me to be removing these opportunities instead of supporting them.”
While Salsa Band will not be running this year, there is an opportunity for some of the music to show up in Jazz Band if there is interest.
“Looking at the root of where salsa comes from, and also the root of where jazz comes from, there certainly can be some overlap there,” Mejia said. “The styles are very interchangeable. As far as instrumentation is concerned, there is the ability to look at different types of music, to be able to reflect both offerings within one group. And that’s certainly something we can consider.”
According to Mejia, one of the deciding factors in cutting Salsa Band was the lack of expressed interest in the club, but this also means that the student body has a say in the opportunities that the VPA department provides in the future.
“What [the student body is] interested in doing is important to our department, and so we always try to provide our offerings to support what the student interests are,” Mejia said. “The best way [for the student body] to communicate [their interests] is directly with the staff or myself to be able to have an understanding. Because if we’re not having that open line of communication, it’s hard for us to know what the interests are. We’re always open to suggestions and that type of information, because it helps inform us to make those decisions.”
