The Ankeny Community School district offers many musical choices for students. We have a concert choir, but they offer show choir as well. We have a concert band, but to continue it through high school you have to do a marching band. This results in the band losing many students, one of which might be me next year.

I play trombone and love playing in the concert band. I just recently got a very expensive trombone. Like many others sadly, I plan on quitting the band because of the marching band. It is very unfair that they force people to have to quit because they don't want to join the marching band.

Some of the main reasons that many people don't like marching band are because they practice during summer. They rehearse multiple days a week getting up at the crack of dawn, and many people, like me, don't want to spend that time playing music we don't want to play. Then there

I think it would benefit the band as a whole if we change the marching band to a choice because it would allow people to participate in the band while not having to do what they want, it would also allow people who just want to do marching band to just do marching band.

I hope that we can change this so that I and many others are able to keep doing what we enjoy without having to do what we don't want to or have to put the expensive instruments to waste.