P.S. 163 Bath Beach Music Teacher Seeks Neighbors’ Help In Revamping Sound System

A middle school teacher at P.S. 163 in Bath Beach (109 Bay 14th Street) has started a fundraiser on the crowd-sourcing site DonorsChoose.org (think Kickstarter for educators) to raise money for a new sound system in his disadvantaged school.

The teacher, Michael Wengler, who has been at the school for six years, depicts a talented student body whose performances are hampered by weak audio equipment. He writes:

We have a great group of students that come from low income families. They love music! The school community turns out for fantastic shows put on by our music students. The children have been invited to perform at some of our city’s top music halls! The students are very talented!… This equipment will help our chorus, solo singers, band, orchestra, solo instrumentalists, glee and guitar club be heard.

While those kids are good, Mr. Wengler said the equipment isn’t – you can’t even hear the performers when they’re using a microphone, he writes. The project costs, including optional donations to support DonorsChoose.org, amount to $1,128.12 – of which $20 has been donated so far. The costs account for two audio racks, 400 feet of speaker cable, and two four space rack bags.

Mr. Wengler’s past fundraising initiatives raised money for student costumes as well as saxophone and clarinet reeds for the band and a professional piano tuner. This time he’s aiming high, asking for the biggest collective donation yet.

Back in my day (I say with my cane and 24 seasoned years of life experience) we choristers performed with crummy auditorium acoustics, and we liked it. But those were the days before newfangled crowdsourcing sites, and also our chorus was pretty bad.

This sounds like a genuinely good cause – to which I say, donate away! You’ll make a lot of future stars happy. From the looks of it, these kids have got talent to spare:

— Sam Shokin