On the first Monday of spring break, Andria Hyden sat at a table in the front room of her Round Rock home using a stylus to make notes on musical scores she had downloaded on her tablet.
The scores she pored over were a mix of new and crowd pleasers. They are known as the fun songs, the ones that Austin Independent School District students perform at festivals in May. They are also the numbers students get to practice now that statewide competitions are over.
But they are also the last songs that the Bedichek Middle School Bobcat bands will perform together before the campus – along with nine others – shutters next year.
Hyden, a four-year band director at Bedichek, will follow some of her students to Mendez Middle School next school year, where she’ll lead the Southeast Austin campus’ band. The campus has been under the operation of a charter for the past eight years in a partnership aimed at improving academic scores. But this fall, Austin ISD will regain operation of the campus, and the district will have to staff the entire school…