INVENTORY STRATEGY IS CHANGING

We are proud of our ability to provide a variety of school-owned instruments to our students. As each school year passes the wear-and-tear on this inventory takes it toll on the life of these instruments, and eventually they need to be repaired with a major overhaul, or replaced.

Our original strategy was to maintain a large "fleet" of medium quality instruments. After much consideration and conversation with other schools, we believe it is a better strategy to maintain a smaller amount of higher quality instruments.

What this means:

• Students will have access to high-quality instruments.
• Our expectation of student care remains high.
• Students will be "sharing" instruments.

A hypothetical example of what this new strategy looks like in action:

There are 12 horn players in our program, grades 9-12. In each period of band there are 4 horn players. Instead of owning and maintaining 12 low/medium-quality instruments, we will own and maintain 4 high-quality instruments.

Students will still use their own mouthpieces, and "germs" can't be transferred from sharing an instrument. We believe this new strategy will save us money in the long-run while still allowing us to properly maintain our instruments. Under our current plan we max out our repair budget around November of each year.

MR

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