A letter from the President
of the SCBDA, Michael Foxworth.

Other Letters

December 6, 2006

Dear Colleagues:

I hope this letter finds you all anxiously awaiting your holiday break where you can spend time with family and friends.  Enjoy this time as you renew and refresh yourself for finishing out the rest of the school year.

Please plan to attend the SCMEA/Southern MENC In-Service Conference from February 7-10, 2007 in North Charleston.  Many of you have expressed various concerns since our last meeting and the only way for considerations to be made and changes to be voted upon are for you to be an active member of our association.  If you want to suggest a change in policy or procedure then you should submit that proposal to the appropriate events chair.  You should then attend the committee meeting at the convention and present your proposal.  Finally you should be in attendance at the business meeting on Saturday, February 10 to vote upon the recommendations from each committee.  Your vote is importance so plan to be there.

You will be receiving by mail a proposal for a bylaws change regarding home school student participation.  The proposal, with changes/additions in red, is:

ARTICLE XI - PARTICIPATION IN EVENTS

Section 1. Only band directors who are members in good standing with the SCBDA may participate or sponsor participants in any SCBDA event.
Section 2. Band directors may enter in SCBDA events only those students who are members of the school band in the school where the director is employed.
Section 3. With the exception of Section 4 and Section 5 below, students who participate in events sponsored by the SCBDA must be active members of the bands in schools that offer courses leading to a South CarolinaHigh School Diploma. Elementary, middle, and junior high school students shall be considered to meet this criteria. Students in band training classes in elementary, middle, and junior high school shall be considered to be members of the school band.
Section 4. Students who attend the South Carolina Governor’s School for Science and Mathematics in Hartsville, SC, during their junior and/or senior years may participate in the SCBDA events provided the following:
  A. Students must meet the requirements in Section 3 above, prior to entering the Governor’s School.
  B. The student’s former band director must sponsor the student’s participation in SCBDA events, and the director must meet the requirements in Section 1.
Section 5. Home school students may participate in SCBDA events providing the following:
  A. Home schooled students must participate in a home school band program that gives a Carnegie unit towards graduation.
  B. Home school band student’s families must be current members of a South CarolinaHomeSchool Association.
  C. Home schooled band students must be registered for events through their band director, who must be a member of SCBDA. (see Chapter 1; Article III)  Parents of home school students and private studio teachers or instructors may not register students for SCBDA events.
  D. Directors of home school band students must send documentation of the home school student’s SCHSA membership in lieu of a principal’s signature on the registration form.
Section 6. When standards of appropriate behavior are violated, or rules of the SCBDA are broken by a student, the student - or in extreme cases, the student’s band director - may be placed under disciplinary sanctions as specified in Article X.
Section 7. Students under disciplinary sanctions may not participate in the event(s) from which they are suspended.
Section 8. No band director may send to any SCBDA event any students who are not properly chaperoned.

Please read this and be prepared to vote on the proposal at the business meeting in February.

Again have a great holiday season,

Michael Foxworth
President
South Carolina Band Directors Association