Dusk had fallen and a nearly full moon hung low in the sky as Southwest Middle School music teacher Keith Ballard stepped onto an outdoor stage and addressed an audience of parents in his signature booming voice.
“This is my last concert,” Ballard announced, bringing a hush to the crowd. Behind him, roughly 80 middle school students dressed in the traditional charro suits of professional mariachi players stood in rows on the stage. They fiddled with the guitars, trumpets, guitarrons and violins they were about to play for an assembled crowd of several hundred at Southwest’s annual winter concert on Dec. 17.
Ballard, a pioneering mariachi and world music teacher who earlier this year capped a decades-long award-winning career by being named to the National Teachers Hall of Fame, thanked parents for coming and confirmed what many had already heard: He was retiring. His last day in the classroom would be Feb. 28.
“It’s been an honor teaching your kids,” he said. “We kept the music and the culture going.”
He reminisced for a few minutes about the highs and lows of establishing one of the nation’s most lauded secondary school mariachi programs. Then, unexpectedly, he issued a stark warning.
“I fought the system,” he said, referring to Sweetwater Union High School District, where Ballard has taught mariachi and other world music at middle schools and high schools since 1998. District administrators, he said, had tried repeatedly over the years to eliminate or cut funding for his and other arts programs in the district. They might try again, he warned.
“My goal is to have a seamless transition,” he said, referring to an assistant music teacher whom he’d recommended as his replacement. He encouraged parents to lobby district administrators and remain vigilant for backdoor efforts to weaken or eliminate the mariachi program.
“I stayed the course,” he said, urging parents to do the same. Then he turned around, faced his student musicians, raised his arms and led a spirited rendition of the mariachi classic, “Primera Vals.”
For nearly 30 years, Keith Ballard has inspired generations of middle and high school students to play mariachi, steel drums and other forms of world music in some of San Diego County’s most under-resourced schools. His students have performed around the country and in front of two U.S. presidents, two California governors and dignitaries ranging from the basketball player Magic Johnson to actor Arnold Schwarzenegger. They have been featured in dozens of news broadcasts, and some have gone on to professional music careers.
For just as long, Ballard has been fighting a public education system he says perpetually undervalues and underfunds music and other arts programs that can engage struggling students and boost schools’ overall academic performance.
Over the years, while teaching students to play revered styles of international music, he has rallied parents to protest funding cuts, called in the press to shame administrators he disagrees with and spoken out at concerts and other public forums. On his own time, he traveled the world to observe education systems in other countries and co-wrote a book about the many ways America’s public schools lag behind their international peers.
His gifts as a teacher have made Ballard a beloved figure at the schools where he’s taught. His activism and refusal to follow orders have made him, by his own description, “a bad boy” in the Sweetwater Union district.
Ballard said he was transferred to Southwest Middle School in 2010 as punishment for “do[ing] my own thing” at Montgomery Middle School, where he had built a thriving mariachi program but clashed with administrators over funding and other issues.
At the time, Ballard said, Southwest’s was “the worst music program in the whole district…I begged, borrowed and stole to get instruments. I went to school board meetings. I engaged parents and students.”
Today, the Southwest mariachi and steel drum program is a district leader that draws students from outside the school’s neighborhood and even from a nearby high school, where students join advanced middle school players in an all-ages band.
Ballard has “the swagger,” said Southwest High School 11th grade steel drum student Oscar Castro. “He has an aura. He demonstrates perfection. It lures you to the group. He’s totally in charge.”
Ballard’s classroom at Southwest Middle School is a packed, jumbled shrine to decades of world music teaching and learning. Steel drums, mariachi instruments and other musical implements lean against walls festooned with news stories, concert photos, posters of famous musicians and hand-written inspirational phrases.
“Music can change the world because it can change people,” one poster says. Another message handwritten on the ceiling says: “Life isn’t fair. Get used to it.” Near that message hangs a piñata shaped like a Tyrannosaurus. On the inside of the classroom door, a poster of Uncle Sam points a finger at students and says, “I want YOU to practice every day.”
The evening of the winter concert, Ballard strode around the room in a dark suit and shiny blue tie, helping students tune their instruments and solving last-minute problems. He handed out picks and special mariachi uniform bow ties to students who had lost theirs and barked orders at kids whose attention appeared to be wandering.
He said he rarely has discipline problems in his classes because he projects authority, treats his students with respect and takes time to get to know them.
“You have to care about them and talk to them and treat them like a friend,” he said. “But never mistake my kindness as a weakness. I can come down heavy and hard on you if I have to. When I tell them to quiet, they quiet down.”
Jorge Marquez Zepeda, an aerospace engineer with two sons in the mariachi band, said parents love Ballard because “he cares about the kids and the future of the program. He knew he would retire, and he’s been getting us engaged about who’s going to replace him. He’s expecting the administration will want to defund and dissolve the program.”
Zepeda said parents have been meeting to strategize about ensuring the district replaces Ballard. “The arts are just as important as science, technology, engineering and math,” Zepeda said. “This is [my sons’] favorite course.”
Southwest Middle School Principal Hector Ornelas said that he would “definitely post” a job opening to find “the best candidate for our school and community” to replace Ballard, though he couldn’t comment on who the replacement might be because the district would have to screen candidates to ensure they had the right credentials.
“I’m very confident we’ll be able to sustain our [arts] program and enhance it,” Ornelas said.
Ballard said he has “100 percent confidence” in Ornelas to “do the right thing” to preserve the music program because Ornelas, who became principal in 2022, “is the best principal I’ve ever had.” However, Ballard said, “I have…zero percent confidence [in] the district office to do the right thing.”
More than three quarters of students at Southwest Middle School qualify as socioeconomically disadvantaged. A majority speak English as a second language. Since arriving at the school, located less than five miles from the U.S.-Mexico border, Ornelas said he has tried to use arts programs to engage students otherwise difficult to reach. He even started a student rock band, which wowed parents at the winter concert with ripping renditions of songs by Nirvana and The White Stripes.
“Coming out of the pandemic, students didn’t feel connected and didn’t want to be at school,” Ornelas said. “To see them coming early and staying late after school for steel drums, I can tangibly see on their faces…the smiles…when they play.” Last year, both attendance and test scores were up at Southwest Middle, Ornelas said.
Voice of San Diego sent Sweetwater Union High School District Superintendent Moises Aguirre a detailed list of questions to determine the accuracy of Ballard’s wider claims that Sweetwater administrators underfund arts programs to make up for budget shortfalls elsewhere.
Aguirre did not respond to the questions. Instead, a district spokesperson emailed a statement: “Our district unequivocally values the arts. While there may be differing opinions, our district is committed to being a responsible steward of its resources. We have a clear plan in place that includes material investments, with personnel investments scheduled to start in the second semester. We are confident that these initiatives will strengthen our arts programs and significantly benefit our students.”
Pauline Crooks, arts coordinator for the San Diego County Office of Education, said that arts programs are, indeed, shrinking in Sweetwater Union schools. “Keith [Ballard] is not wrong in his observation,” she said.
Crooks said she recently helped a team of Sweetwater teachers and administrators develop a strategic plan for arts programs as part of a wider effort to help districts respond to a 2022 state ballot initiative that created a dedicated funding stream for school arts programs.
The strategic plan was finished in 2023 but remains unimplemented, Crooks said. Since working on the plan, she said, “I’ve heard about a lot of cuts at programs last spring and this year and potentially next year too.”
Crooks said Sweetwater’s arts cuts make the district an “outlier” because most districts in San Diego County and elsewhere in California have used funds from the 2022 ballot measure to expand arts programming. Last year, Sweetwater reported to state officials that it had “postponed” awarding arts ballot measure funds for at least one year due to accounting issues. The district’s current 2024-25 budget shows a $121 million gap between revenues and expenses.
Deborah Nevin, facilitator for the School of Creative and Performing Arts at Chula Vista High School, said she and other district arts educators are growing increasingly alarmed at the pace of cuts to arts programming in Sweetwater schools.
In just the past few years, Nevin said, four high schools — including Eastlake, San Ysidro, Sweetwater and Otay Ranch high schools — either eliminated music courses, lost teachers or brought in a succession of substitutes to lead once-thriving music ensembles.
At the same time, the district’s well-regarded visual and performing arts director recently retired and was replaced by an administrator with no prior experience teaching or leading arts programs. Brahim Wahib, promoted to the director position last year, previously led a district STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Math) initiative. He heads an office that, since the pandemic, also oversees career and technical education in the district.
Wahib did not respond to requests for comment.
At the Southwest Middle School winter concert, Ballard expressed a range of emotions about ending his long teaching career. He admitted that the constant battles against school administrators had worn him down. “If I knew it would be this hard to be a music teacher in a low-income area, I wouldn’t have been a music teacher, just a teacher,” he said. “It’s always a fight.”
At the same time, he said he regretted leaving while Ornelas was principal. “I mean, the principal teaches the rock band!” he exclaimed.
And there were the students. After the concert, Ballard handed out trophies from a big box he’d hauled onto the stage himself. One student got a trophy for mentoring other students. Another got one because, as Ballard bellowed from the stage, “she has a lot of enthusiasm.” Oscar Castro received a trophy for being a “maestro de excelencia.” Ballard predicted another high-achieving student would “be our next surgeon or lawyer.”
“It’s very awesome,” said ninth grader Mark Guadagno of playing in the Southwest Middle School steel drum band. “It’s very noteworthy for people who grew up kind of poor…Music can bring people together. It’s like it’s embedded in your heart…People like Mr. Ballard are a great motivator.”
So, why is Ballard retiring? He’s only 61. During the concert, he bobbed and swayed to the mariachi songs then jumped off the stage and accompanied the steel drum band on a set of conventional drums with cowbells. He appeared fully in his element.
The real reason came out at the very end of the evening, as Ballard stood near the stage talking while his students wheeled away their steel drums and younger siblings ran around the school lawn evading parents eager to head home.
In just a week, Ballard said, he would be boarding a plane for the Philippines, where he planned to join a trainer of “elite Special Forces” soldiers in a grueling jungle survivalist training program. In 2018, Ballard, who is an avid skydiver and self-confessed “adrenaline junkie,” had been invited to appear on the Discovery Channel reality television show “Naked and Afraid.” The show pits contestants in a game of survival in a remote jungle with no clothing, no food, no water and just one tool.
“I couldn’t [appear on the show] because…they still show your butt and that wouldn’t be a good thing if you’re a K-12 teacher,” Ballard said. After deciding to retire, Ballard said he called the show’s producers and was invited to return. “I’m in the finals again,” he said. “I’ll be the oldest candidate on that show. I’m in really good shape. I weightlift a lot. I’m really strong. And I skydive and wingsuit. I did five wingsuit jumps last Saturday.”
He said that mariachi is not, in fact, his favorite kind of music. “I like classic rock and metal,” he said. A perfect day, he said, is strapping on a parachute, jacking up the headphone volume on a blasting tune by the heavy metal band The Red and jumping out of an airplane thousands of feet above the desert in Riverside County.
Ballard said he first considered teaching mariachi music after attending a conference in Arizona, where he earned a second bachelor’s degree in music education. Latino conference attendees “just idolized the mariachis,” he said. “I thought wow, this has huge potential, expanding it into music education.”
“I had no idea I’d spend my whole career teaching mariachi and steel drum bands,” he said. “It’s not that I have such great love and passion for mariachi. Some of the teachers do. I have great love and passion for what it does for the kids.”
Some students approached and asked for a key to access a storage area. Ballard pulled out a key ring bristling with keys and told the students not to lose it. He lingered a few more minutes then followed the students across the lawn toward his classroom.
A short time later, the moon had risen and the school was virtually empty. Ballard was still in his classroom, putting away instruments.
Sweetwater district has been reducing Art’s and technology programs for years in the name addressing the needs of students. Arts and technology programs do require more resources but the cuts have not made appreciable differences in the overall statistics for graduates vs. non-graduates. Students need an education that they can relate to real life and not a pipe dream. Arts and science and technology help keep students engaged in their education when they can see how it can be involved in their own lives.
These kids cannot read, they don’t need churro suits they need an education.