Chelsea schools looking to upgrade their band program

With the help of bond money, the Chelsea School District will be making a big and an important musical purchase to help improve the band and orchestra programs.

At its June 14 meeting, the CSD Board of Education got a look into a recommendation made by the band program that's asking to make a purchase of some musical instruments that are sorely needed.

In introducing the recommendation, CSD Superintendent Julie Helber said some of instruments are old with some string instruments being cobbled together. She said the purchase might be large initially, but is expected to offset needs going into the future. She said it will help address immediate needs, which there are a lot of.

She said she can speak for the band program in saying they are thankful to taxpayers for allowing such a purchase to be possible with the help of the bond money.

In their recommendation letter to Helber, Katy Steklac and Alison Roberts, Director of Bands for the Chelsea School District, said “We are pleased to have the opportunity to upgrade some of our equipment using funding from the 2019 bond.”

They said of the three qualified bids, they would recommend to the board they accept the bid from Marshall Music Company.

“The Chelsea School District has partnered with Marshall Music for decades for our instrument rental, repair and supply needs,” the recommendation letter reads. “It is the highest of the three bids, but they have included all requested mouthpieces for free ($3,500 value), and they have offered to put all the instruments on our 2021-2022 maintenance contract ($18 per instrument).”

Helber said this purchase will be of the instruments that stay at the school and are typically the larger ones. Families still need to buy their own, when needed.

The amount of the bid is $144,832, which the band program is confident is a good number for what they need.

“We have done extensive research on the brands we have requested, and we feel that in addition to being high quality and durable, they will fit our program needs,” Steklac and Roberts said in their letter.