LETTER: Former PAM staff members share observations

Here are some thoughts about your legitimate  question — why all the hostility toward the new PAM — put together by several former employees and faculty members:

Unfortunately, the reservoir of bad feelings toward PAM runs deep. Many of its former teachers are still in the region teaching at local schools or in private studios, still offering excellent music education, just not under the PAM name.

Not surprisingly, when these former teachers hear of claims about what PAM offers or will offer, they are skeptical, and reasonably irritated at the implication that PAM has some special claim to superior music education. The same holds true of donors, students and parents who have gone on to realize the value of the region’s other music education offerings, comparing them to what they had at PAM.

What they and others have witnessed at PAM seems to have been bad planning, bad (or no) budgeting and a bad attitude toward outsiders.

Even with the best of intentions, the latest leaders are — one assumes, inadvertently — sending the message that these problems might not have been solved.

For example, on planning — as has been noted on your pages already, disinterested observers reading the newspaper articles about MU and PAM could have predicted that PAM would have to leave their building, yet insufficient planning seems to have taken place for that move.

In addition, in a recent newspaper article, the former dean of faculty was quoted as saying that an artistic endeavor such as PAM doesn’t lend itself to things like a “feasibility study.” Message to the community: nothing’s changed.

As to budgeting, it is perplexing that the school went ahead with its summer festival, an expensive undertaking, when it was facing budgetary problems. The summer festival must cost a great deal, since the school always seemed to provide scholarships for most students, especially those brought from China, students who dazzle audiences and donors while here but then return to their native land. Message to the community: nothing’s changed.

Lastly, when you read in the paper that the current leadership seems to be blaming donors for being forced to take the steps toward bankruptcy, even going so far as to say donors will find their reasons for nonpayment of pledges sounding “pretty silly in federal court,” an old “to heck with everyone else” attitude still seems in play.

Other nonprofits, as well as PAM in the long run (there’s the bad planning again), might see a chilling effect on pledges from such an attitude. What future donors will want to give to an institution quick to blame them if things go wrong, quick to imply their nonpayment reasons will be aired in court? Message to the community: nothing’s changed.

So the “new” PAM still feels like the old one in some important characteristics. As mentioned, this could be inadvertent, but nonetheless, it’s there.

As to the founders and their current pension-less state, it’s pitiable, to be sure. Unfortunately, their devotion to PAM seemed to involve control at all costs, even the cost of good management.They are lucky to have good friends willing to help them in these times, and one hopes they find some peace.

If PAM doesn’t survive, music education, some of which is excellent, will still continue in the region. We may find the art of teaching and learning music begins to thrive in ways not possible while PAM continued to dominate the news.

In fact, those who wish to support music education might want to spend their resources on the many fine music education offerings in the area not continually grabbing the spotlight yet responsibly managing their resources, including the prep program at MU since it will now occupy PAM’s former building. It would be wonderful to have that building alive and vibrant with the arts, perhaps even employing many of the excellent teachers once under PAM’s label.

It could become a terrific addition to the arts scene downtown, precisely the use for which the building was originally intended. It just won’t have the PAM name, and hopefully, none of its baggage.