Inglewood’s program had been chain-sawed by financial challenges and the pandemic, but Joseph Jauregui built it back up – and his students are winning scholarships Joan Rosas says educators as early as kindergarten flat-out told him he wasn’t capable. “I got horrible grades,” he said. “I could barely read until eighth grade when I figured out how to teach myself.” The Inglewood high school sophomore says he received little meaningful support for his learning challenges and, under the circumstances, grew to dislike school. Eventually, he started acting out, trying things like smoking. Everything began to change when he picked up his older brother’s trombone. At first, he dabbled. Then he met Inglewood high’s band director, Joseph Jauregui – AKA Mr J – who encouraged him to get involved in marching band. A few lessons in and he was sold. “Now as long as I have band, I don’t care. I’ll do whatever I have to do to stay in school and play,” Rosas, 15, said. In Inglewood, a suburb in Los Angeles county with plenty of baked-in challenges – higher rates of socioeconomic adversity, community controversy over a spate of school closures and, recently, fear of Ice raids – band might seem like a frivolity. But experts say that for kids like Rosas, it can make all the difference. “If there’s unpredictability in the school and the community, those can be risk factors in the lives of children,” explains Angela J Narayan, an associate professor of clinical child psychology at the University of Denver who studies adverse and beneficial childhood events. “The ideal is for school to serve as a protective factor, rather than another trauma.” That resonates with band director Jauregui, who says music was always his protector. He grew up a pastor’s kid in nearby South Gate, a suburb less than 10 miles (16km) from downtown Los Angeles. His parents divorced when he was 16. “Music was always my escape,” he said. Jauregui graduated high school in 2005 and eventually earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in music performance from California State University, Los Angeles. He plays the saxophone and flute, but in his formative years he and his music-obsessed friends revered one high school: Inglewood. “We used to sneak into the Inglewood performances because they played the fun stuff,” Jauregui said. For decades, Inglewood’s band dominated southern California high school competitions under the leadership of director Conrad Hutchinson III, whose father had been a legendary band director at Grambling State University, a historically Black university in Louisiana. Under the elder Hutchinson’s leadership, Grambling became the “world-famed Tiger marching band”. The younger Hutchinson arrived at Inglewood high in 1977 and created a program in that same historically Black college and university (HBCU) style – popular music, impressive choreography and high-stepping footwork – with flags, dancers and twirlers adding to the show. Inglewood high took home the top prize at the nationwide battle of the high school bands multiple times. But by the time Jauregui, 38, interviewed for a job in February 2021, those glory days had faded beyond institutional memory. The district was flagging under financial difficulties that led to a state takeover in 2012. A revolving door of leadership chain-sawed programs and extracurriculars and an unprecedented number of students fled the district. Then the pandemic.