Musical Club Reinstated

Smatticus

Active Member
This year in the Norwich School Distrcit we have been on a contingency budget because the community voted down the proposed budget. All of our extracurricular activities and programs (with the exception of some sports) were cut for this year. In the summer we created Norwich CARES (Community Action to Restore ExtracurricularS) to help raise funds and work with the board to reinstate activities as quickly as possible. Norwich CARES was responsible for reinstating the marching band (which won first place in Small School I this season).

We have been struggling with the school board to reinstate other activities since the beginning of the year and we finally have had some success. Our Musical Club was reinstated last week and we have already had our first meeting. This year's musical will be The Music Man. Other programs that have been reinstated include a variety of other clubs, the FIRST robotics team, and Jazz Band.

Another goal of Norwich CARES will be to promote voter awareness for next year's school budget vote. Thankfully we have been able to work around this year's problems with the budget up to this point. I have heard of some school districts in New York State that have been sued by citizens in order to reinstate activities.
 
Good for you! Amazing what a group of people can do when they try.
 
Congratulations and well done.
 
you want to talk about small marching bands eh? we have a 5 person marching band (6 when i show up to help)for grades 6-12!!!!!!!!
 
lol, that's a small marching band!

Last year our school went through something similar. The State (MA) cut its school funding drastically, leaving our school with the choice to A) bankrupt the 7 towns in our district or B) cut nearly everything and let the towns stay afloat. They chose B (because if they had chosen A, the state would have come in and taken control of the towns and not funded the schools anyway!)

We started the school year with only a few sports teams, and those teams could only play "in league" games, wich ment that some teams had as few as 8 games. Student Council and everything were cut, so a group of about 6 or 7 kids (myself included) got together and decided that we were going to have student council meetings anyway, even if they locked us out of the rooms and wouldnt recognize us because we didnt have a faculity advisor. To shorten the story up, we didnt have elections to be on the student council, intestead we just invied the whole school. Within a two meetings we had over 20 people comming to the meetings (if we had elected, we would have had only 12 people)! We rolled several other activities into the umbrella of student council, and were quite active. As the old student coucil used to do, we sent our minutes to the school committee (as a represnetative to the School Committee, i presented them). The school committee did not know what to think of the fact that students took enough initiative of their own to do all the work to run all these orgainizations without outside help.

This was such a shock to them, they decided right then that if these activities were this important to students the first thing they would do with the next grant they recieved was fund all the extra curricular activities that had been cut. And wouldnt you know it, later that meeting, somone else announced that we had recieved a grant, and we got our activities back, including student council and our drama department!

Anyway, news of what we did got out, and we found out that publicitiy is your friend! Before too long, Brown University was flying me and a few of my friends to San Diego to speak at the National Association of Secondary School Principals national conference, (and of course, we had to see the sights arround Sand Diego!) My piece of advice, keep working hard and try to drum up publicity. (Also, keep a record of the work you are doing for this, because it will look great on college applications!)
 
Oh ya, one more thing, how is it that it is always the techs who end up putting in all this work to make good things happen at school? I guess we are just used to working hard in the theator to make things work out well in the end!
 
we had a competitive marching band my freshman year. we got 7 out 8 in the state it was our first year and we were in the top class(we bet a school who has been marching for 8 years). we had to cut it. our director is also directing the middle school. our distrist is cuting alot of things this year.
 
our marching band is awesome and i would join it if it werent for tech and my youth group, they practice for hours every day. they do so much work they even get varsity jackets. i have heard amazing things about it from my friends but i just dont have time, and for the 1st time ever our budget was voted down this year
 
Since this is turning into a Marching Band forum, our Concert Band pretends to be a marching band a few times a year (actuallly once in the spring and once in the fall). We do not have a football team (simply because we are such a small school that we do not have enough people to make up a team, and have a soccer team at the same time, and people arround here play more soccer anyway (and soccer is cheaper)) without a football team to play for, we only do actual parades, The Big E (like a state fair, but for all of New England Together, it is a HUGE fair) in the fall and 3 memorial day parades. (there are 7 towns in my disctict, and the HS gets a random 3, the MS gets a different 2 and two of the towns never have a parade)
 
Our band wins the Christmas City of the North Parade every year, and partly due to the fact that all band students are automatically required to be in the marching band! Probably 600 kids about~
 
since were all talkin bout marching band, what instruments do y'all play?
i play alto sax but im hopin to switch to tenor
 
Clarinet for me! I have what is sure to be a fun evening tomorow with my Band. A local college is comming to do a joint concert with my High school's band. That means they will play 2 songs by themselves, then my band will play one song, then both bands will play together for 3 more songs. This means that by the end of the night we will have 150+ people on my tiny stage! I am not sure how we are all going to fit, but I know i am going to have to push back the cyc and tie back all the side curtains! It is going to be a crazy concert, that's for sure! Oh ya, did I mention I have to run lights, and sound, and record the entire concert? (yes, even when I am playing!) There is a chance I will end up bringing the remote control for my sound card up on stage with me, so i can ajust the recording level depending on how loud we are. I dono, it is going to be interesting!
 
percussion. i played timpani the last 2 years but since we got new ($17,000) timpani from phantom regiment the section leadre plays them. we have a concert band and wind ensemble. freshman year we took i beilve 2nd at the all-americna music festivel at hardrock in orlando. wind ensemble got perfect last year for the state thing and concert band got a 1. we have a pretty strong program. most people come to the football game to hear us and ntot our horrible football team...
 
haha same here no one ever watches our football games, but halftime comes and people stop talking to watch the marching band
 
It's so sad that when schools have to trim budgets, the arts is the first place they look, and sports is always the last.

I don't know why people can't get it that arts education stimulates every type of learning in children, from fine and gross motor coordination, to creative and logical thinking, working in groups, etc. And usually nobody gets injured. Yet the football and basketball programs, which usually bring in a little more revenue, never get cut. Hmmm. I thought schools were supposed to be not for profit.

Fortunately, our district doesn't see things that way. In fact, my oldest daughter will be marching in the Rose Bowl parade in January.
 
last year governor mcgreevy, and i will not comment on the recent scandal that resulted in his resignation, well he cut state funding for the arts and in protest we held a funeral for the arts. one art class walked through the halls with an open casket that they had made and kids threw in sheet music and paint brushes and clay. it was a really cool protest.
 
LoL Ya for the people watching the Band! I personaly dont like watching football at all, so i would defanatly be one of those people watching the band instead!

Ian: Congrats to your daughter!

Our, Jazz band, Concert and marching band, combined have a budget of $100 this year (not counting the part-time teacher's salary). At least they have a budget though!
 
I agree with you len, unfortunately it is the arts that go first. It is actually kind of weird at our high school, we have three music teachers and three art teachers; all the music programs are very strong. On the other hand we have basically one technology teacher... and our school just renovated the wood working shop and classrooms... but now there are hardly any classes because we only have one teacher. What sense does this make?

Speaking of things not making sense our FIRST robotics team builds our robot in the machine shop at BOCES, yet this year BOCES cancelled their machining program. They had said they were going to maintain the shop for us but now they are hastily rearranging very expensive, sensitive milling machines to make more classroom space. We had to get all of our tools out this past weekend. These milling machines were set perfectly level in their proper places according to code and now they have just been rearranged and the leveling plates all mixed up. Why?!?!

Since this kind of did become a topic of marching band I'll share my experience with everyone. Last year I joined our Norwich Purple Tornado Field Band and I learned how to play marching bass drum. Last year I also played keyboard in the pit and this year I played bass drum and conducted backfield for one of the songs of our show. This year our show was Carnival of the Animals. (www.smatticus.com or www.norwichfieldband.org) The previous two years our band has been in Small School II in the New York State Field Band Conference and we took first place in our class both years. This year we actually moved up a class to SSI and, almost unbelievably, took first place. As a personal note to anyone who reads this marching band is an awesome, awesome experience and I would highly recommend it to anyone interested in something as musical and high energy as this. I've never been involved in sports and never really had school pride but with marching band you get the best of everything. It's like being on a sports team and playing music at the same time. The only thing I can really think to call it is unique and a whole lot of fun!

PS: How many times have you read to the bottom of the forum and typed a reply message only to realize that you didn't go on to read the second page? :x
 

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