ESC School Boards approve spending for 70 new band uniforms

Once again, Band Director Brian Mahler appeared before the School Boards to ask for new band uniforms. The first time he asked for the money last school year, the boards were discussing staff cutbacks. Also on the agenda for the same night as Mr. Mahler’s second try the board was discussing the very serious implications that Governor Culver’s 10% across the board cuts would have. With a “hands thrown in the air” gesture indicating that he knew what he was up against, he characterized his timing as “really terrible”. (Trying to keep the tone light while passing handouts.)

When the two schools started sharing, Mr. Mahler and Andy Meredith discussed possible ways to uniform the band. Their first strategy was to not tax the school any more than they have to because they knew they were going to have to buy all new sports uniforms, so they got by for a couple of years with what they had.

Now, the time is “fast approaching” when they cannot get by with the existing uniforms. According to Mr. Mahler, some of the uniforms are not in very good shape, and for the first time, East Sac County didn’t receive the maximum amount of points possible for appearance at Carroll Band Day. This in spite of making sure that every single band member had matching socks and shoes and had every single piece of the uniform in place. According to Mr. Mahler, this is the first time that he has had that experience.

Mr. Mahler believes that the band may be looking at a significant jump in numbers next year with the possibility of surge of as many as 36 more students participating in band. The best case scenario would be that there will be 80 students going out for high school band next year, but realistically Mr. Mahler thinks it will be in the 60 student range.

Mr. Mahler’s recommendation to the boards was to purchase 80 uniforms, this to insure that there would be enough uniforms at the right size for everyone.

After some discussion where the board asked about what could be done with the old uniforms (used by the middle school), what a plume is (feather on top of the hat), could the money come from PPEL* (no), they got down to price. Each school district would be responsible for coming up with $6,700ish in order to provide the band with 70 uniforms.

There was some niggling over the $10 garment bags, but that was cleared up when the wisdom of spending so little to keep the uniforms looking good was agreed upon.

Near the end of the conversation, President of the WLVA board, Chuck Brotherton made the first statement of support saying, “Well there’s always going to be some reason why we shouldn’t spend the money, I don’t care when it is. We’ve provided our …kids with decent uniforms, we’ve done that with our athletic teams and …I really can’t think of justification for not doing that with the band.”

Other than to say that she was in favor of making the band members buy their own garment bags, Sac School Board President Shirley Phillips had nothing else to say when School Board Director Brent Wilhelm made the motion to give the band department $7,000 for the purchase of new uniforms and called for a vote, which passed unanimously. The WLVA board passed a measure awarding the same amount. With this spending OK’d it is now up to the boosters to come up with the remaining 50% of the money, which they have already apparently agreed to do.

If all goes well, the uniforms should make their public debut on March 1st at the Parade of Bands performance in lake View.





*PPEL funds are used to buy equipment and the Department of Education doesn’t consider band uniforms equipment.