Private Lessons Update and THANK YOU!
Panther Band and Guard Family,
I just wanted to take this opportunity to thank ALL of you for your support of our kids and our program. It was so wonderful seeing so many of you last night at our first General Booster Meeting of 2024 and hearing your thunderous applause for the kids and their hard work when they finished their first ever performance of Drawn Upon for an audience.
I also want to recap the private lesson enrollment portion of my Director Report, especially so everyone has the most up-to-date information about private lessons!
Simply put, enrolling your student in private lessons is the single best thing you can do for them! The pursuit of excellence in ANYTHING (in the case, musical excellence) will follow them well past their high school band days - into whatever they choose to do post-high school - trade school, college, military enlistment, entrepreneurship, etc.
Last year at Liberty Hill HS, we ended with just about 50% of our program enrolled in lessons, which for us was a HUGE milestone. Building a culture of private study with a professional musician and pursuing those growth opportunities benefitted our band enormously. It is our hope to continue growing that number and easily exceed 50% (and beyond!) this school year.
To help with that, I am immensely grateful to share the budget set forth by our Booster Board in April 2024 (and approved by the General Membership!) has $7,000 dedicated for private lesson assistance. It is important for all of us involved to remove as many barriers as possible to private lesson enrollment and we are hopeful that with this money, we can help provide more opportunities for our students to pursue private lessons.
On our band website (https://www.lhpantherband.org), the most up-to-date version of the private lesson enrollment form is now embedded on the 'Private Lesson Enrollment' page.
This form has a striking upgrade from last year's form - the ability to request financial assistance for your student's lessons (seen in the GIF above). From there, you can select your co-pay amount - the amount you will pay per lesson - and the Band Boosters will cover the difference. This form is completely private and will only go to me once filled out.
All of the directors at both the middle school and high school have worked very hard to assemble a world-class team of private lesson instructors - the majority of our private teachers have or are pursuing a graduate degree, and some even have their doctorate in instrumental performance. Suffice to say, these are true professionals who can give the most expert one-on-one guidance to our students!
With this new form out today, please fill it out even if you were already taking lessons. This is the best way for us to track how many students are enrolled in lessons. And if this is your first time signing up for lessons here, wonderful! We are excited to see your growth with this expert instruction.
As always, thank you ALL for EVERYTHING you do. We could not do what we do without you!
Go Panthers!
Joshua Muñoz
Director of Bands
Liberty Hill High School
www.lhpantherband.org
