After shutting down operations in November to deal with a financial crisis that threatened is survival, Raleigh’s nonprofit Community Music School has announced it will reopen its doors and that classes will resume beginning February 1.
Citing an outpouring of financial support, the board says it’s confident it can continue providing inexpensive music lessons to the roughly 120 students from underprivileged circumstances currently enrolled as well as to students in future years. To stay healthy, the board says it will engage the public in reevaluating its mission and practices.
Last September, when the students returned for lessons, board members discovered the twenty-three-year-old school needed to come up with $100,000 to stay open. At the end of October, feeling it had no other choice, the board shuttered the school rather than incur debt. In the ensuing months, the board has aggressively sought donors to make up the gap. Apparently those efforts were successful, and now the teachers, administrators, and students at CMS can breathe a sigh of relief.
“We’re over the moon here,” says operations manager Erin Zanders. “Can’t wait to get our kids back into classes.”
Correction: This post originally mischaracterized the Community Music School’s shortfall of its fundraising goal as a debt.
