The Passage Middle School Orchestra provides high quality music education opportunity to the students of Mary Passage Middle School. In collaboration with the other performing ensembles at Passage Middle School, we strive to bring superior musical performances to the Newport News Community. Our ensembles perform between five and ten times per year for other schools, and in the Newport News community. Most recently, notable performances included a joint performance with the student members of the American String Teachers Association at Christopher Newport University in November, 2016, two years of performances at Hollydazzle at City Center at Oyster Point in December of 2015 and 2016, and the Newport News Public Schools Outstanding Staff Member of the Year Banquet in April, 2017. Most recently, we have been selected to represent Newport News to perform at the National Orchestra Festival in Atlanta, GA on March 9, 2018.

Begin attire inventory for student musicians

The Passage Middle School Orchestra collaborates with many schools throughout Newport News. We currently participate in city-wide performances and events with all of the middle schools in Newport News. As well, we work with Woodside and Denbigh High Schools to allow for them to recruit our students into their high school programs. We also work with our elementary schools in our zone to recruit students to our middle school program.

Specific events include:
- Newport News Public Schools All-City Orchestra
- Recruitment Event with Denbigh High School in October, 2017
- Performances during Epes Elementary School 5th Grade Chorus Concert

In addition, we collaborate with the student chapter of the American String Teachers Association, at Christopher Newport University, to give their student members the opportunity to observe teaching practices in the orchestra classroom, as well as provide them laboratory opportunities to work with small groups of students and entire ensembles. This helps them to be more prepared for their internship and teaching experiences.

The Passage Middle School Orchestra provides high quality music education opportunity to the students of Mary Passage Middle School. In collaboration with the other performing ensembles at Passage Middle School, we strive to bring superior musical performances to the Newport News Community. Our ensembles perform between five and ten times per year for other schools, and in the Newport News community. Most recently, notable performances included a joint performance with the student members of the American String Teachers Association at Christopher Newport University in November, 2016, two years of performances at Hollydazzle at City Center at Oyster Point in December of 2015 and 2016, and the Newport News Public Schools Outstanding Staff Member of the Year Banquet in April, 2017. Most recently, we have been selected to represent Newport News to perform at the National Orchestra Festival in Atlanta, GA on March 9, 2018.

This project will allow for our Orchestra to perform in many different venues and for many different events. It will allow for students in the Passage Middle School Orchestra over the next ten years to have appropriate attire to match the level and quality of their performance. This will also allow the Passage Orchestra to be more available for performance opportunities to the Newport News and Peninsula Community.

Our growing Orchestra has been invited to perform at several events that have required a more elegant attire than our current formal concert attire, which is a navy blue polo shirt embroidered with our logo, and black dress slacks. Because the clientele we serve in our school is on the lower end of the socioeconomic status spectrum, our students are unable to pay for a higher level of attire.

We would like to start creating an inventory of school owned concert attire for our program. For this quarter, we will begin with purchasing attire for our advanced orchestra, which will be attending the National Orchestra Festival in Atlanta, GA on March 9th. The next quarter, we will continue to apply for grant funding to add to our inventory to ensure we have enough concert uniforms for our intermediate orchestra as well. After using grant money from the fourth quarter of 2017 and the first quarter of 2018 to create a foundation for our concert attire inventory, we will then, based on projected enrollment in our program for the 2018-2019 school year, determine our needs and use the third quarter of 2018 to apply for grant funding to ensure we have adequate attire for our returning students during the 2018-2019 school year.

These uniforms will be maintained and stored in-house by the Passage Middle School Orchestra. The company we intend to purchase the attire from, Cousin's Concert Attire, specializes in student performance attire and guarantees their product to be of exceptional quality, durability, and has a low price guarantee. After much research, we have determined this company's product to be most appropriate to begin our concert attire inventory. Because we intend to store and maintain the inventory in-house, we anticipate the uniforms to last approximately ten years. Cousin's guarantees product availability for six years after our first purchase.

Project cost includes the cost of the actual attire, shipping of attire, as well as the rack and rack cover for proper storage.

Our Parent Booster is excited to begin working on one of your committees. Please let us know which committee would be most appropriate for us and when they will be meeting so we can be sure to send a representative from our organization!