Parents in Boardman are raising concerns over how scheduling changes for the middle school may affect the band.

Boardman's school board plans to restructure its middle school schedule by reducing two class periods to extend the remaining periods from 42 minutes to 56 minutes.

To make room for the extra instruction time for academic subjects, band and orchestra classes will be reduced from five days per week to three.

Jake Aron, president of the Band/Orchestra Parents, said the change will hurt the program.

"Obviously you want to start kids younger in any kind of program, whether it's sports or instrumental. They build on that and get better and better. That's going to hurt the program overall and hurt the students," Aron said.

Superintedent Frank Lazzeri said the changes are necessary to improve academic performance in the middle school, which he said has one of the shortest blocks of instruction time in the county.

"Since the reports came out we've had one excellent report card in one middle school in report card system in the state of Ohio," Lazzeri said.

He said the elementary and high schools score excellent every year.