For the past ten years, a non-profit foundation in California has combined parent advocacy programs with instrument rentals in a winning combination to help save and restart music programs.
Often a good idea is so simple it makes you wonder, “Why hasn’t someone thought of this before?” The challenge has been well-documented in these pages for years: band directors take issue with some instruments — usually bought at a mass merchant and usually at one-half or even one-third the price of an instrument bought at a traditional music retailer — that can be difficult to deal with in the band room. Yet the few who have tried to send out flyers expressing the opinion that these instruments are below standards have been met swiftly with cease-and-desist letters (or worse), often on a law firm’s letterhead.
