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.

Continue building our concert attire closet.

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 Events with Denbigh High School
- Performances in collaboration with Elementary Schools

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.

After receiving our first grant from Community Knights, the grant committee challenged us to extend ourselves to non-profit organizations outside of the school system. We are currently partnering with the Virginia Peninsula Food Bank, doing a food drive to give back to our community. Our Passage Music Boosters Executive Board is also currently searching for other opportunities for us to team up with non-profit organizations that benefit our community.

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 venue 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 high level of attire.

After receiving our first grant of $1000.00 from the last cycle, we were able to purchase the first installment of concert attire. We would like to use this cycle to purchase the remaining uniforms for our upper orchestra.

These uniforms will be maintained and stored in-house by the Passage Middle School Orchestras. The company we will 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. Because we intend to store and maintain inventory in-house, we anticipate the uniforms to last approximately ten years. Cousin's guarantees product availability for six years after our first purchase.

After this cycle, we intend to explore our projected enrollment for the 2018-2019 school year and re-evaluate our needs to determine if we will continue to apply for funding toward this project, or begin to apply for funding for other projects that are pertinent to the music program at Passage Middle School.

Our Parent Booster Executive Board is excited to be working with the Open House and Annual Dinner Committee.