Schedule Concert Night of Budget Vote

Submitted by Kathleen Bragle, New York

Idea posted April 21, 2006

For about ten years, we had a District Choral Festival on the same night as the budget vote in our district. This was very successful and effective! Choral students from Grades 4 through 12 participated. We are a relatively small district, and the first couple of years we included an Elementary segment, Middle School choir segment, and High School segment. At the very end, all choir members would join together to sing.

Later, we went from the three segments to a revue-style concert that was less complicated, quicker moving, and generally easier to do. Using the CD accompaniment, we did several different types of revues (i.e., Disney, folk music, Broadway, etc.) which were divided between all three groups. (We had a planning meeting where we went through the entire revue and worked that out.) We tried to keep things interesting and paced it so that each group had approximately the same length of time to sing. It was zippy, quick, and a tremendous success.

However, due to the success of this event, we did have crowd control issues. One year some seniors couldn't park close enough to the H.S. gym to vote, and we had to stop the concerts all together. I guess, if you can imagine, we were TOO successful! However, now that we have an addition built onto the H.S. with a larger gym, we are hoping to resume this tradition again!