Fairfax Marching Band May Lose Its Leader

A shelf covering an entire wall of the Fairfax High School band room is filled with nothing but trophies. In fact, that 30-foot-long shelf reached its capacity last year, according to band teacher Ray Vizcarra, who was hired in 2006 to relaunch the long dormant program. 

Sitting in his conductor's chair beside a table that holds the dozen or so awards the band has won this school year, he reflects on his past five years at the high school. The Fairfax Lions Marching Band has gone on to win almost a hundred awards, including two first-place finishes in Los Angeles citywide competitions.

But this year marks the last at Fairfax for Vizcarra, who was one of 4,485 teachers laid off by the Los Angeles Unified School District due to budget cuts. Vizcarra received his notice in mid-March, and June 30 will be his last day.

A boyish looking 30-something, Vizcarra is still in shock even a month after getting the news. He loves his job and wants to keep working with the students, even if it's only part-time. “I already have next year so planned out,” he said. 

LAUSD followed a last-hired-first-fired policy, which meant despite the awards and accolades he brought to Fairfax, Vizcarra lacked the seniority to keep his job.  

The day before the layoffs were officially announced, Principal Ed Zubiate took him aside and told him personally. He did not want Vizcarra to get the news by email.

“I had a huge lump in my throat. I was devastated,” Vizcarra said of the news. “I thought about how I would miss my students tremendously. They are my inspiration.”

His students seem to be equally upset. 

“Mr. V. has done so much," said one student. "Band’s not going to be the same without him." After hearing the news, another student was unsure about returning. “I don’t think I’m going to be in the band next year if Mr. V.’s not here,” he said.

Such loyalty from high schoolers might be rare, but Zubiate said Vizcarra is the kind of teacher who brings out that devotion. “He loves his work, his art,” Zubiate said. “He has the energy. He puts it all together and it inspires his kids.”

Born and raised in South Los Angeles by a single, Mexican immigrant mother, Vizcarra is the eighth of 10 children and the first in his family to go to college. 

Having to pay his own way, it took Vizcarra longer than most to finish, but in 2005, he graduated from Cal State Fresno with a degree in music education. He quickly got a job teaching music at a South L.A. middle school and also volunteered with the band at Poly High in Sun Valley.

When Poly High played Fairfax in football, he met Fairfax’s then-Principal Heather Daims during halftime. The school had just received an anonymous $100,000 donation to revive its band program, which had been dormant since 1984, so she invited Vizcarra to interview.

A few days later, he got the Fairfax job, thinking he would start in the fall. Instead, Daims pulled strings and got him transferred to Fairfax in the middle of the year. He taught music history that first semester, but also started showing the students how to play the new instruments.

By fall 2006, he was teaching music full time, cajoling almost 60 students into joining the band. Most of the Fairfax students had never even touched an instrument before, he said, but they learned quickly. By the end of the school year, Fairfax came in first place in the citywide band competition.

Vizcarra is still stunned to think that a band program that had not even existed a year earlier beat out bands that had years of experience. 

“I knew we had done really well, but when they announced we were the winners, I still couldn’t believe it,” he said.

The Fairfax band, as well as the orchestra he also launched, went on to win many more awards, including second-place awards in that citywide competition in 2008 and 2009, and another first-place finish in 2010. 

His friend Erik Estrada, who coaches the school’s color guard, believes Vizcarra has a unique way with students.

“He levels with them. He speaks their language,” Estrada said. “He has this passion about him that the kids respond to. He’s really made a difference with them.”

Vizcarra knows firsthand how music can change a person’s life. He was a below average student until ninth grade when he joined the band playing trombone, something he excelled at immediately. 

“I figured out I was good at something,” he said. “Kids who had been bullying me in middle school, when I joined the band, all of a sudden they were respecting me. They saw I was good at something and that changed their attitude.”

But the then-15-year-old Vizcarra was making Cs and Ds in his other classes. When the band director told him he had to keep his grades up in order to stay in the band, Vizcarra buckled down. Soon he was making As, he said. 

“There was no way I was leaving that band. It meant too much to me,” Vizcarra said.

He sees the same thing happening with many of his students today. Their grades have improved, along with their attitudes and outlook. He notes that 100 percent of his graduating seniors have gone on to higher education.

Fairfax’s band program will continue, even if Vizcarra is not there. That idea does not sit well with Zubiate, who is trying desperately to keep Vizcarra. 

"Without Ray, Fairfax is left without the program that he built, that he created," Zubiate said. "In five years, the young man has led his students to two city titles. We are working very hard to keep him and we’re looking everywhere for help."

Vizcarra said he is willing to go part-time if necessary, but regardless, will continue to teach music part-time at nearby . Students from Laurel feed into Fairfax.  

In the meantime, the Fairfax Lions Marching Band competes on Saturday afternoon at Oceanview High in Huntington Beach for the Southern California state title. Vizcarra is optimistic. “I think we can win it,” he said.  

And in what could be one of Vizcarra’s last public performances with the Fairfax band, it will hold a pops concert featuring a debut performance of the Vizcarra-conducted Laurel Middle School Band on April 28 at 6 p.m. in the Fairfax High Auditorium.