2025-26 Music Accomplishments

To our WMS music program families and supporters

Thank you so much for your support for a wonderful year of music at Washington Middle School, and your impact on the sustainability of this amazing program. We wanted to share a quick look back at all we did together in the 2025-2026 school year.  There is So Much to be proud of!

• Supporters stepped up in an emergency fundraising campaign, raising $82K for the band director position!
• We had a special visit and $30K donation (included in the $82K above) from the Seahawks, Safeway, and the Vitalogy Foundation, featuring Seahawk veteran Lofa Tatupu and Pearl Jam guitarist Mike McCready!
• FOWM wrote a successful grant to 4Culture for $112K for two years of non-salary support for the music program.
• Families and friends of student musicians enjoyed several concerts featuring beginning and intermediate bands and orchestras, chamber orchestra, and jazz band throughout the year.
• Concert orchestra and concert band earned all Superior awards at the Elliott Bay Music Education Association Band Festival at Whitman Middle School.
• Concert orchestra received 2nd place at the Music in the Parks Festival at Stadium High School and Wild Waves!
• Concert band received 1st place, “best overall” band, and “most spirited” band awards at the Music in the Parks Festival.
• Jazz band performed at the Bellevue High School and Bellevue College Band Festivals.
• Jazz band and chamber orchestra performed at three nearby elementary schools to generate interest in WMS and our music program.
• Concert orchestra and concert band performed in side-by-side concerts with Meany Middle School and TOPS K-8, along with Garfield orchestras and bands at Garfield’s Quincy Jones Performing Arts Center.
• Jazz band performed at the Light Rail Crosslake Connection Opening Celebration.
• We all bought and ate so many oranges during our December citrus sale.  Some of you even helped unload the truck before sunrise, while others helped navigate pick-up (not in the rain this year, thankfully!).
• Supporters purchased dozens and dozens of t-shirts, sweatshirts, and “We love WMS Music” yard signs; and hundreds of brownies and cookies to support WMS Music!
• Friends of Washington Music paid for clinicians who work with small groups of students throughout the year; funded instrument repair and consumables (reeds, strings, etc.); and purchased sheet music for band and orchestra.

Thank you for your partnership, for your incredible students, and for your dedication to music education at WMS – we could not have done this work without you!

With gratitude,

Ann McNally and Maria Monroe-DeVita

FOWM Co-Presidents