School bands, organizations come together in Bridgewater to brainstorm funding ideas
Award fewer trophies, cut back on travel and relax rules for selling tickets to competitions.
Those were three of the ideas tossed around by representatives of a leading high school band service organization and about a dozen schools from across New Jersey who gathered for a meeting Tuesday night.
The meeting, hosted by Allentown, Pa.-based U.S. Scholastic Band Association, was intended to offer school band directors and band parent organizations – considered the real fundraising engine behind many high school bands – some ideas for offsetting funding losses in the face of education budgets hit by reduced state aid and an economy struggling to emerge from recession.
“I think everyone agrees something needs to be done,” said George Hopkins, CEO of Youth Education in the Arts, the band association’s umbrella organization. “The question is, “How do we get there?”
Hopkins said reducing the number of trophies handed out at band competitions could help. But after Hopkiis offered that idea, one band director noted that their school sells ad space on the trophies, adding that the hardware is a moneymaker for them.
Another suggestion offered by Hopkins was to reduce the quota of tickets bands must sell to parents and the school community to competition shows. For example, decreasing the quota to the Northern States Championships by 25 percent would result in savings of $100 to $400 per school, according to Hopkins.
Yet another idea was to reduce the number of judges per show, cutting that cost to the organization and its member schools.
Band representatives and the organization said no decisions likely will come until after April 20, when New Jersey voters decide local school budgets. Many local spending plans are expected to be defeated this year because of increases in property taxes or proposed personnel layoffs. The cuts are in part a reaction to drastically curtailed aid from the state, which is laboring to close its own nearly $11 billion budget gap.
“We don’t have a lot to begin with,” noted North Plainfield district band director Heather Fencik. “And now we’re going to lose our 4th-grade program altogether,” she continued.
High schools represented at the gathering included Old Bridge, Hillsborough, Hunterdon Central, Immaculata in Somerville, Somerville, Point Pleasant Borough, Delaware Valley Regional in Hunterdon County, Linden, J.P Stevens in Edison, Metuchen, North Plainfield and Bridgewater-Raritan, which hosted the event.