Music Academy - About Us

Hunt A+ Elementary School (Hunt) and First United Methodist Church (First UMC) have been in partnership with each other for over 20 years. A new Hunt School is being built across the street from First UMC. 90% of Hunt School students get free or reduced priced lunch. Piano lessons are not offered in the elementary schools so First UMC and Hunt began a program to offer piano lessons for students in grades three through five in the fall of 2017. Piano lessons happened Monday afternoons from 2:45-3:30. For the 2017-18 school year, we had 35 students participating and we had 26 in the 2018-19 school year.  We paused the program when the old Hunt school was torn down the fall of 2018.

The new Hunt A+ Arts Elementary School opened the fall of 2022. The Music Academy @ First restarted the Beginning Piano Lesson Program on Monday afternoons with three 7-week sessions. We had 31 students take beginning piano lessons. We also started 2 handchime groups that met once a week at the beginning of the school day. We had a 5^th grade group and a 4^th grade group with a fall session and a spring session for each grade. We had 50 students participate in the handchimes groups. In January, we began offering free private lessons for piano and strings to students who could not afford to take private lessons. We had 6 students taking those lessons. Overall, we had 87 students participate in the programs of the Music Academy @ First during the 2022-2023 school year.