"Respectfully, sir, what would happen if these same students had English twice a week? How would the language teachers feel about that? Or math? or science?"

The State Board of Education says that Fine Arts are part of the Required Curriculum, and that as such school districts must provide TEKS-based instruction.

The downside of this is I was at a district once where this was brought to the attention of the principal and she shut down the band program and put music on the shoulders of the academic teachers.

https://www.tmea.org/music-education-in-the-law/