7/17/20....the sad loss of the day....from our choir director

Thought this was the likely outcome....but here's the news.  (Show choir is probably our family's biggest extra-curricular event.  It takes a lot of time and training starts in early August and doesn't end until March.  This year Anna was joining the crew after attending many many show choir competitions.)  sigh....

Show Choir 2021 Questions/Comments

Happy Friday! There is a lot of important information in this email. Please read it thoroughly. The first section is a joint letter from the vocal music programs at ACHS and AHS. The second section is exclusively from ACHS. Dear Parents, Students, and Supporters of Ankeny and Ankeny Centennial Choral Music: After a long summer of working together with our administrators and colleagues to plan and troubleshoot, the directors at both AHS and ACHS would like to provide the following joint statement: Due to the ongoing health crisis and the physical nature of our activity, show choir camps for this fall will be postponed.  It is simply not safe to have all of our kids in the same building for camps. Masks or no masks, it would put the kids we love so much in a dangerous position. We have many students who are immunocompromised, and they are important parts of our teams. Asking any of you, but especially them, to risk their health for show choir camps would be irresponsible. We love our choreographers, too, and we’d hate to jeopardize their health. We’d also hate for them to travel to our schools and risk bringing any health issues with them to share with our kids. In fact, some of our choreographers live in states with full lockdown procedures in place right now, rendering them unable to travel. If we try and do this now, we risk having to fully cancel the entire season. In our eyes, it’s better to be careful now in hopes that it will allow for something later in the school year. Just remember this: show choir is not cancelled. It will be different, and we’ll need incredible flexibility, but it is not cancelled. At the end of the day, this is about our kids. We love them too much to risk their health right now. We will work diligently to find a way to be together eventually, and we will work to create something wonderful again this year—different maybe, but still impactful. Additionally, we are in constant contact with our colleagues around the state, and as we all process new information together, we will keep you posted. Please stay safe for the rest of the summer, and please know that we’re thinking about you. Sincerely, Nolan Henkle Director of Choral Activities Ankeny Centennial High School Ben Walters Director of Choral Activities Ankeny High School Additionally, I feel like I need to keep you further updated regarding how this next year will look. This is no longer part of a joint statement, but just Henkle talking. After much consultation with our colleagues across the state, we believe it necessary to agree to not compete or host during the 2020-2021 show choir season.  We believe that not competing this year opens doors for us to get creative and still find a way to provide extra-curricular music programming this school year. It is fully our intent to find a safe way to foster the skill-building and experiences that our kids expect. Without a hard deadline (competition season), we can adjust timelines and alter the format of what we perform, as needed, to best meet the educational and safety needs of our students. Transporting all of our kids to/from competitions in a safe manner would be implausible.  The 2021 Mid-Iowa Show Choir Championships will not occur. It would not be financially possible or morally responsible to host a show choir competition this season.  Asking you to pay regular show choir fees (at a time when money is already short for many families) only to pull the rug out from underneath you by cancelling competition season later would be cruel, and we are not interested in putting that burden on families. We will release a revised fee schedule in the coming weeks to reflect this. Here's the deal: competition season isn't going to happen. If we accept this now, it allows us to still have a season together. And there is PLENTY to still be excited about! I don't want to give anything away too soon, but your directors are working hard on innovative ways to create new things, some of which would be impossible in the context of a competition show. I'll let each individual director share more as the season gets closer, but know that you're in good hands! Also, the more we do our jobs to stay healthy, the better the chances of live performances by the end of the year--so be smart! I'm sure that this information has your head spinning a little bit--and that's totally understandable. My brain has been doing the exact same thing since May. Please know that we've poured weeks and weeks into this decision and we haven't taken it lightly. If you have questions or comments or need something clarified, please fill out this form. I will send another email next week answering as many of your questions as I possibly can. I have chosen to require you to add your name to your form submission out of self-preservation (it's a lot easier to be mean when you're anonymous), so please keep your thoughts and questions respectful. If you're too emotional to formulate a helpful question or comment, perhaps wait a while. I know we're all at different phases in our emotional cycle, but I've already mourned the loss of competition season, and I'm reinvigorated for what this year could bring. After all, does anything normal ever happen to our program? Nope. We love and miss you a million, and we can't wait to take another wild ride together. Go Jags. Henkle