Bands of America: Database of Champions  School Landscapes In Continuous Engagement

Bands of America celebrates 40 years of providing positive life-changing experiences through music in 2015. Data on their site are incomplete, though. We're adding it as quickly as our time allows. (This is not my real job.)

Note: This is single-source data, which we can't confirm from independent sources. Errors may exist, and some data is omitted as we do our research. Each line of data represents countless hours of student and educator effort.

Would you like to see the most frequent schools on the list? Sort the data on "BOA School Name" and then on "Count" in descending order.

The inspiration for this project, known as SLICE Project 40, was the grand championship at Clarksville, Tenn., on Sept. 19, 2015, for O'Fallon Township High School. The band's grand championship was the first for an Illinois band in 14 years. Director: Melissa Gustafson-Hinds. Drum majors: David Lewis, Natalee Barker, Lilly Schmidt, and Bianca Castillo.

Voxitatis requested a director's essay about the contest, which we received on October 2. The school joins a few others from Illinois as bands that have ever been named grand champion at a BOA event.

Voxitatis is committed to facilitating constructive dialog among students, schools, and communities. See our equilateral triangle model here.

SLICE, or (in our acronym-rich world) School Landscapes In Continuous Engagement, is our way of presenting data that you can slice and dice any way you want. We hope seeing information for yourself, in a perspective you find informative, enlightens you about local schools, schools at large, and community engagement.

If you would like to help us add data (or if you see an error), send a quick note to paul@schoolsnapshots.org.