May 16, 2010
AHSTS 2010-11 Season Update
To Our Members, Alumni, Parents, and Patrons,
For many years AHSTS has produced a musical as part of its season, giving its members an opportunity to be part of a uniquely American art form. Unfortunately, this year AHSTS was unable to do so.
As many of you know, because of the difficult financial situation, the School Committee eliminated funding for all after-school activities. The School Committee's directive was that families would have to pay a fee for participation in an activity and that the fees for activities would be based on the costs of participating.
Our goal has always been to provide an enriching experience to all students who would like to participate no matter what grade they are in or what their skills are. AHSTS has always been a place where everyone is equal and everyone is welcome. Being part of AHSTS has never been about whether a student’s family can financially afford to be part of the program.
Even with this new system, our goals could not change.
In order to ensure that as many students could participate in AHSTS as possible, we decided that was necessary for AHSTS to provide financial support to help reduce fees. We did this keeping in mind that we must continue to maintain a certain amount of savings to guarantee our long term ability to mount productions, buy and repair equipment, and withstand hardships.
With all of this in mind, it was not practical or responsible to produce a musical this season. Although a musical does bring in a lot of money, they are expensive to produce. There would be no money to reduce the fees and make them affordable for families.
After this difficult decision, we decided that certain actions had to take place to enable us to more aggressively reduce student fees and still produce expensive productions. We had to produce very budget minded productions. We had to aggressively pursue program ad sales. We had to bring in parents to help find and spearhead new ways of fundraising such as a Toll Road and a Musical Revue. Finally, we had to reach out more aggressively to our patrons and alumni for support through our Friends of AHSTS program.
We set a financial goal for AHSTS to meet that would allow us to add back in a musical to our season and raise the student fee reduction and scholarships from about $2000 this year to $6000 for next year.
We are proud to say that this goal has been met and exceeded.
Let us not forget that we, as a society, should be in mourning for those who did not participate. We must mourn for those members we do not have because the idea of a student fee put up a road block in the possibility that they could be part of AHSTS. Even with our successes this year, AHSTS must build on what we have learned so that no one willing to work hard and be part of something special is excluded. We will not be satisfied until there are no student fees.
Let us know forget that our success this year are based on the hard work and determination of every AHSTS member—past and present- and the support of their families.
We have much to be proud of, but even with our goal being met, we now have to look ahead, not to the 2010-11 season, but the 2011-12 season. We will need to set new goals to ensure that AHSTS will be able to continue to reduce fees and still produce a musical every year.
I have no doubt that we will be able to meet these goals with the continue support and hard work of the membership, families, alumni, the school community and our patrons.
Yours truly,
Ashland High School Theatrical Society