Re: Is band "uncool"?


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Posted by Brad on August 31, 2003 at 02:43:12:

In Reply to: Is band "uncool"? posted by Geezer on August 30, 2003 at 20:07:05:

Band is very "uncool" at my school. My whole school is "uncool." Back 10 years ago my school had a 400 person long waiting list to get into it, but in recent years the neighborhood changed, we got a new principal, the class scheduling went from traditional to block scheduling, and tuition began a steady, steep increse from $2500 the 1993-1994 school year to $6500 for the 2003-2004 school year. All of thes things have spelled disaster for the, at one time, most respected and revered bands in Cleveland, Ohio.

We had 165 at the max. So many kids came in that my band director had to turn people down from marching band because we didn't have enough uniforms. Each year he'd get a list of the 250+ incoming freshmen and see at least 100 played an instrument, so he picked the best ones to march.

Once all of the hits against us began, as well as the incident in 1998 in which a band trip to the Caribbean led to underage drinking, casuing an end to band trips for four years, led to the band size to go steadily down from 165 to 65. In the 1999 season, we purchased new uniforms, only 65, and we still use these new ones. This year's marching band has 46, and we are losing 20 seniors, so we will be down to 26.

Of the 150 freshmen this year, 30+ said on their application that they played an instrument or were interested in learning an instrument. Of those 30+, only 4 joined band. There were another 4 that moved on from last year's beginning band. If these numbers continue, we will have a 34 piece marching band next year. We may not exactly have a good show next year, if we even bother.

The school used to care about the band. The old principal put every effort into showing the band off, getting us to this competition, that competition, this game, that game, this ceremony, these parades, etc. This new principal doesn't care about band. He's told us the marching band will not go to local grade schools and perform, that we are not going to any competitions.

It also doesn't help when half the people don't put any effort into marching band. We have become a "walking" band. No one marches or does anything in step, everyone hunches over and points their instruments at the ground. They have the music in their face and they still can't play and even though they wrote the moves into the music, they still don't know when to go. They have said time and time again how much they hate it and how they want to quit, but the only problem is that they can't quit because marching band is a graded course that is part of the first 10 weeks of the concert bands. So unless you play football or volleyball, you have to march if you signed up for one of the two concert bands.

Oh, BTW, another sign of appreciation the school has for us, we just got done paying off those $30,000 band uniforms(the uniforms they were supposed to pay for but once they saw the bill decided to let the band itself pay for them), they cut our funding by one third. We received $7500 last year, so this year i believe the funding to $5000. My band director told me, as of right now, paying all of the basics (bills, drum heads, sticks, mallets, mouthpieces, reeds) the band already is out of money, and we are starting the third week of the 2003-2004 school year.

You may ask, "Why don't parents do fund raisers?" Well, there are no parents. The Band Boosters shut down last year because only 10 parents showed up to the meetings and they couldn't get anything accomplished, except arguing with the director and each other. So there are no parents to do anything, the students don't want to do anything, the band director now has to do everything, eventually he's going to burn himself out.

It's ironic though, that the school makes $4,000,000 a year in tuition, $600,000 in bingo, $50,000 in their annual raffle, and $10,000 from the sale of parking passes (yes, to park in my high school's lot, you need to buy an $80.00 parking pass). But yet, even with gobs of money, they cut back funding to everything in the school, except the athletic departments, with the band receiving the biggest cut backs. Obvoiusly a school can't spend near $5,000,000 a year when no one gets anything. So the money is going somewhere, somewhere where it shouldn't be going.


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