Palatine students become a mariachi band

Every day at Winston Campus Junior High in Palatine, 26 students come together to learn and play traditional mariachi music.

After five or six years of proposing the program, the class became a reality last school year, band director Mario Mangello said. All the instruments are supplied through grants, and Mangello says students have learned a year's worth of music in three to four months.

"The biggest thing is with the demographic of our students, we are able to connect with their culture and also with the parents," Mangello said. Maria Garcia's seventh-grade son joined the band this year after playing violin for three years.

"We are from Mexico and like Mexican songs," Garcia said through translation by her son, John Maldonado. "It's a tradition."

In its first year the class drew 20 students. When 65 students signed up for it this year, the school had to turn more than half of them away.

"Every demographic that's represented in our school building is represented in the band," Mangello said. "And it surprised me how much mariachi a lot of the kids already know."

The band performed at Sandburg Junior High before the District 15 board of education meeting Wednesday, and also led the crowd in the Pledge of Allegiance.