This 6-pillar curriculum teaches the basic literacy we need to be personally and financially successful and to do so in a manner in which together we evolve a culture that supports the emergence of an advanced human civilization.
The Last Repair Shop, which won the 2024 Oscar for Documentary Short Film, profiles four technicians employed by the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) to repair musical instruments at no cost for LAUSD’s students. The film was directed by filmmaker Ben Proudfoot (who also won an Oscar for the 2021 documentary The Queen of Basketball) and pianist-composer Kris Bowers, himself an LAUSD alumnus.
Despite its somewhat irritating “woke” content, the short film is a worthwhile watch for its fascinating glimpses of musical instrument technicians’ painstaking work, and the descriptions of the life journeys that led the technicians to their special career. The film also features short appearances by musically fulfilled students who have benefited from the instrument program, and a joyous finale performance by LAUSD alumni of all ages as well as current students, playing a composition by Bowers.
The four interviews—with technicians Dana Atkinson (strings), Paty Moreno (brass), and Duane Michaels (woodwinds), along with supervisor Steve Bagmanyan (piano)—sweetly communicate the sense of satisfaction they derive from helping students, whose families could not otherwise afford an instrument, experience the joy of making music. The technicians’ mini-biographies also comment on music as a reprieve from childhood bullying and from adult wartime trauma. The Michaels portion of the film offers the colorful detail that Michaels had a lengthy performing career on fiddle in the bluegrass-country band Bodie Mountain Express, which once opened for Elvis.
With an astonishingly small total fleet of 12 technicians, the LAUSD—the nation’s second-largest public school district—has 130,000 musical instruments in circulation for upwards of 500,000 students. The repair service is apparently “one of the last publicly funded services of its kind” in the U.S.
Despite this community service, we cannot go without mentioning that the LAUSD has a deservedly bad rap in health freedom circles due to a zealous Covid vaccine mandate that forced dangerous injections on employees who complied and resulted in lost jobs for over 1,000 who did not. Health Freedom Defense Fund and LAUSD employees with California Educators for Medical Freedom filed a lawsuit in 2021 challenging the mandate’s constitutionality, but the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and the U.S. Supreme Court have both shamefully upheld a U.S. District Court’s 2022 dismissal of the lawsuit.
Is The Last Repair Shop a public relations effort to repair the school district’s Covid-tarnished reputation? After the film secured its Oscar nomination in 2024, the LAUSD Education Foundation launched a $15 million capital campaign, and in 2025, the shop got a $1-million gift from a TV creator and a visit from cello luminary Yo-Yo Ma.
