School Size vs. Band Size
This is a most interesting topic because I have been on both sides of it. Should marching bands be classified by school size, meaning how many students attend the school, or by band size, meaning how many students are actually in the band? Truthfully my bands have always been giant killers. We have won over bands more than twice our size on more than a few occasions. It is fun I have to admit. It is fair though? I don't know. This can work both ways. I once had a marching band with only 44 students in it...Total! We won our class at every competition except one (we were second) and won 2 grand champions. I think they might have given us a few points for being so small and good. My question is this. Do the judges judge bands of different sizes differently? I think so. You see our state competition classification is based on school size. The judges see bands from less than 70 students all the way to bands of more than 250 students. Can they possibly be objective? Sadly the answer is probably not. A more objective stance would be if the judges saw bands that were at close in size to each other. How about this for a plan:
1A - up to 48 winds
2A - 49 to 64 winds
3A -65 - 81 winds
4A - 82 - 96 winds
5A - 97 and up
It won't fix all the problems but hey it might be worth trying. What do you think?
posted by Jon Brady at 7:31 PM
3 Comments:
I had a fantasy of putting out a one man band. Probably a second clarinet. Had a perfect kid for it. The "up to 48" works perfect.
I believe that most band-size rules benefit large schools with less successful programs while they penalize small schools with successful programs.
I teach in a small school district; we average around 150 students total in the high school. My high school band averages around 80 (I'm fortunate to have tremendous support). Since our high school doesn't have a football program, our only marching is a few parades each fall.
Competitions around here are always based on band size which, I feel, is unfair. We are forced to compete with enormous schools that have huge budgets and large staff of directors. I'm at my high school for one period a day before I move on to the elementary / junior high schools students. My band budget can not afford custom written arrangements, additional staff, or the purchase of marching instruments (that we use a few times a year). Some years we are the giant killers that win and some years we get killed by the giants.
Having said this, I have to confess that we don't put a lot of value on winning trophies. For us it's the process that leads us to doing our best that is the most important.
I think that this would definitely be something worth trying. It might, as they say, even out the playing fields a little bit.
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