The Arkansas School Band and Orchestra Association (ASBOA) is an independent non-profit organization that runs inter-scholastic contests for instrumental music students in grades 7–12. The ASBOA is affiliated with the Arkansas Activities Association, another non-profit which sets the regulations governing all high school inter-scholastic contests in the state of Arkansas — including football.
These two organizations collect state money, private donations, school membership fees, and student entry fees. Rather than using this money to pay the officials who work at their events, the ASBOA requires public school orchestra teachers to volunteer as judges for their contests. While orchestra teachers are working as judges at ASBOA events, they are not necessarily paid according to the terms of their employment contracts with their individual districts, or protected by state laws governing teacher working conditions.
However, these teachers would certainly lose their employment contracts if the ASBOA disqualified a school’s students based on the behavior of their teacher. (For example, if a teacher refused an unconstitutional requirement to “volunteer” as a judge.) Thus, the ASBOA has total authority over its member teachers, but no responsibility to them — allowing a corrupt system to perpetuate itself.
The ASBOA constitution (Section 1,G) and the bylaws of the Arkansas Activities Association allow participating schools to designate any administrator or full-time faculty member (or a non-employee adult, if the school has fewer than six participating students) to chaperone their students at inter-scholastic contests. Nowhere in the student eligibility rules does it say a participating student must be sponsored by an orchestra teacher who is willing to work as a judge all day.
Student eligibility, according to the ASBOA constitution, primarily depends on three things: “Must be a member of ASBOA, must have paid participation fees by the specified time, and must have paid necessary entry fees by the specified time.” Frankly, you don’t even have to register before the deadline, as long as you get them the money. Haas Hall Bentonville got to register students last year, even though they missed the paperwork deadline (September 30) by five days.
Still, unwritten rules — unconstitutional though they may be — is how the ASBOA runs its events. Mike Burkepile, a Fort Smith orchestra teacher and last year’s north orchestra region chairperson, required Arkansas Arts Academy to send me as a judge last year, in order for my three students to be eligible. My school could have insisted on the written terms of the ASBOA constitution, but they didn’t, so I had to go (or lose my job.)
Why does the ASBOA require unpaid labor from its member teachers? Don’t they have enough money coming in to hire some unaffiliated judges?
Our region sends thousands of dollars in “overages” to the ASBOA each year. (By my math, at least $6000 from All-Region string audition entry fees alone — not counting annual membership fees!) However, the ASBOA does not disclose their financial records. They and the Arkansas Activities Association say they’re not subject to open records requests under the Arkansas Freedom of Information Act, because they are private, members-only organizations.
Recent legal developments suggest otherwise. A case called Brentwood Academy v. Tennessee Secondary School Athletic Association (2001) went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, who ultimately found that the TSSAA was a de facto state actor. Similar decisions have been applied to inter-scholastic governing bodies in Illinois, Arizona, Missouri, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Mississippi, West Virginia, Massachusetts, and Pennsylvania.
If, indeed, the ASBOA was an agent of the State of Arkansas when it required me to “volunteer” as a judge at All-Region Orchestra auditions last year, then Arkansas owes me, several other orchestra teachers, and a thousand children an explanation and an apology. They also, probably, owe us our money back.
I was the orchestra teacher at Arkansas Arts Academy High School last fall, when the ASBOA’s north orchestra region hosted its All-Region Orchestra string auditions. I had previously been a private teacher, so I knew a little of what to expect, but this was my first time seeing the process from the inside.
Because teachers are judging their own students in real time, the ASBOA has lots of complicated judging rules that are supposed to prevent favoritism. The auditions are “blind,” meaning judges are separated from students by a giant piece of cardboard so they cannot see who is playing. Children are designated by number, and may not speak in the audition room. Judges may only read from an assigned script. Teachers judge in pairs, and junior judges aren’t allowed to speak at all.
Each judging room is monitored by a parent volunteer. Another parent volunteer sits outside the door to monitor the hallway outside the judging room. There are nine judging rooms. When a student enters the judging room, the script begins. After the student completes their last playing excerpt, they must sign their scorecard in the judging room, in front of the room monitor.
Prior to the audition day, the ASBOA distributes printed audition music and scale sheets with instructions written on them. The ASBOA constitution, if you read all 30 pages, also contains additional information about mandatory 50% point deductions that judges are required to assess against students playing an incorrect tempo or articulation.
Nowhere in the distributed music or in the ASBOA constitution does it mention that there is also a mandatory 50% point deduction for students who use vibrato when playing a scale. Nowhere does it say that the 50% point deduction for playing an “incorrect tempo” only applies if you play something too slowly, but that going too fast is not penalized. These judging rules were only explained to the participating teachers during the judges’ meeting — on the morning of the auditions — after we’re all separated from our students and unable to inform them appropriately.
Update 11/19/19: In 2016, region chairperson Mike Burkepile suggested posting a link to the Google Doc of judging instructions (including the unpublished scoring rules) on the ASBOA website, specifically “so new people have some guidance.” However, Julia Reynolds never posted the link. Instead, Fort Smith orchestra teacher Steven Hughes (Burkepile’s department head in Fort Smith) read the rules aloud on the morning of the auditions, including his notation: “If you disagree, great. Bring it up at the region meeting for JR and state meeting for all-state (HS). The region meeting occurs during the All-Region clinic in 2 weeks.” Although Hughes and Burkepile hadn’t told the new teachers about these scoring rules, they were determined not to allow discussion until after the auditions were over.
In October 2017, when I learned (at the judges’ meeting) about the full scoring rules, I filed formal grievances about the inadequate distribution of written rules. The ASBOA never responded to me. However, the next day, Fort Smith orchestra teacher Steven Hughes emailed a (mostly male) group of teachers about my grievance, and sent them a revised version of the judging instructions. In this email, Mr. Hughes explicitly recommends NOT forwarding the revised instructions to any of the other participating teachers.
Considering that only this “inner circle” of seven teachers and two ASBOA employees currently knows the rules that Steven Hughes wrote last year, I hope that every child participating in All-Region Orchestra auditions this fall is a student of Steven Hughes, Karol Rulli, Jesse Collett, Mike Burkepile, Dan Mays, Curtis Hansen, or Ely Yale. Otherwise, they won’t have access to the complete, written scoring rules ahead of time.
Teachers from this elite group of seven also receive other exceptional treatment. For example, Jesse Collett and Dan Mays (Bentonville public school district) registered students from two schools apiece, despite the ASBOA constitution requiring each school to have its own representative. Even more exceptionally, Karol Rulli received special, written permission, from ASBOA executive secretary Julia Reynolds to sponsor students from two different districts, even though one of them (Haas Hall Academy, a charter school district with campuses in Rogers, Fayetteville, and Springdale) has no ASBOA membership at all.
The ASBOA constitution allows students to register, individually, for orchestra events if their school has a band membership to ASBOA. Haas Hall Academy had no ASBOA membership of any kind, but the ASBOA made an exception for Karol Rulli’s private student from a non-member district.
Children who compete at ASBOA All-Region Orchestra auditions in the “north” region of Arkansas should expect to be on campus for twelve hours, with no access to their teachers, no food besides chips and soda, and only untrained parent volunteers to chaperone them. This might violate lots of Arkansas laws about public school students and inter-scholastic events, but it’s how things happened when I took my students to All-Region Orchestra auditions last year.
My school, Arkansas Arts Academy, loaded our bus at 6:15 in the morning. We drove to Fort Smith, where we unloaded the bus around 8:00, in time to register and begin warming up. All 965* registered students waited in the gym, tornado shelter, and music classrooms while all of the teachers went to the library for a judges’ meeting, which was scheduled for 8:30.
The published schedule said judges would select and post the required music excerpts by 9:00, so that auditions could begin at 9:30. However, it was never the hosts’ intention that we should start on time. Steven Hughes had written to Mike Burkepile and Curtis Hansen eleven days earlier, “We will likely post after 9 am since 30 minutes is not a long time to have a meeting and make selections. That is okay.”
Ultimately, the judges posted excerpt requirements around 9:40, and began judging at 10:15. Before auditions even started, our students had already been sitting on the gym floor for two hours. By the time auditions ended, it was 7:45 PM — and my students still had nearly another two hours on the road before they got home.
The ASBOA constitution limits a judging panel’s work hours at any event to eight hours, or nine hours in an emergency. However, this rule is commonly disregarded. Last year, I worked for 11.5 hours as a judge, and everybody had to stay until we all were finished. Of the nine judging rooms in our region last fall, two had more than 180 students assigned to them. Mine had 189. This wasn’t an emergency —this was a conscious choice.
When he published the judging assignments last year, region chairperson Mike Burkepile instructed the judges to keep each audition under a three-minute limit. Assuming that the judges (being teachers, who want children to have positive learning experiences) give each child as much time as possible within that limitation, the rooms with 180+ children apiece were scheduled for nine hours of auditions (not counting the registration the judges’ meeting, and a 30-minute warm-up) from the start. Yes, with careful excerpt selection, judges could shave off ten or twenty minutes to divide up into bathroom breaks. Still, it’s not a schedule made in good faith. It doesn’t serve the children (who have to sit around all day, waiting for their three minutes of glory) nor does it meet the the requirements of the ASBOA’s own constitution.
This year, rather than reducing the number of students or increasing the number of judges, the ASBOA has decided to shorten audition times. Thus, participating children will still be required to stay on campus all day, but will only actually get a two-minute time slot during which to demonstrate their skills. How long does it take a child to calm their nerves, slow their heart rate, and settle into a good performance? I bet it’s longer than their audition will last.
Here are some better ideas. I encourage the Arkansas Department of Education, administrators of Arkansas schools, the ASBOA, and ASBOA member teachers to consider these options before orchestra contests start again this year.
- Divide a large region into two smaller ones. (ASBOA already does this for band regions.)
- Divide a large audition room into two smaller ones, with different judges. (Arkansas Choral Directors Association does this for all-region choir auditions.)
- Judge some of the required skills in one room, and some in another. (ASBOA does this for some of its all-region orchestra auditions, but not the “Cadet Orchestra” violins, which I was judging.)
- If a participating school can’t/doesn’t send a teacher to judge, charge that school an additional fee and use the money to hire an outside judge. (Arkansas Choral Directors Association does this.)
- If a teacher doesn’t receive an “Additional Days” stipend from their district, allow a paid teacher to register students from multiple schools in the same district together, so no unpaid teacher will be forced to work for free. (ASBOA allowed this for Bentonville Public Schools, but not for my charter school district, at the event where I judged.)
- Excuse nursing mothers from judging for a year. (Oklahoma does this.)
- Do not require teachers to judge. Instead, hire unaffiliated judges and allow teachers to stay with their students during competitions. (All inter-scholastic sports, everywhere.)
- Allow students to sign their paperwork under the supervision of hall monitors — instead of in the judging room — to cut each audition time by 30-45 seconds. (ASBOA allowed this at all-region orchestra auditions in 2016-17, but not in 2017-18.)
- Designate two substitute judges from among the teachers in attendance. (ASBOA did this, but would not honor my request — prior to the beginning of auditions — to have one of the designated substitutes replace me.)
- If a qualified teacher with no work assignment volunteers to replace an unwilling, unpaid, lactating teacher who does not even meet the necessary requirements to judge, allow the substitution. (All decent human beings, everywhere, would have allowed this.)