Journal Sentinel: Erica Breitbarth was a 22-year-old music education major fresh out of Wheaton College when she got hired at Milwaukee’s Reagan High School.
Reagan, an International Baccalaureate school rising at 4965 S. 20th St., had no real music program in 2009. It would be up to Breitbarth and band director Adam Murphy to build one. But two-thirds of Reagan students came from low-income households and half had never taken a music class in their lives.
“Our philosophy was, we wanted a place for every student to be involved in music, no matter what that looked like,” Breitbarth said.
Today more than 400 of Reagan’s 1,300 students participate in music classes or clubs that focus on history, theory, performance, composition, DJ skills, radio production or musical theater. Breitbarth’s impact on that growth attracted the attention of the Grammy Foundation, which named her a finalist for a 2017 Grammy Music Educator Award.