For many years, Mr. Don Pickell has been in charge of the Upper St. Clair Marching Band, and he has been very good at it. He is a popular figure in the band and at school, and has led the Wind Ensemble to consistent "Superior" ratings from the PMEA. Because of all of this, we, the populace of the band, were very shocked and saddened to find out that Mr. Pickell would no longer be working with the marching band for this upcoming year. Therefore, we ask you, the school board, to reinstate Mr. Pickell to the marching band so that he may continue to lead us to great success.

Every year Mr. Pickell has been very active in the marching band, we sounded great and morale was very high. However, in 2018, the band was more closely run by Dr. John Seybert, where the morale of the band was very low, and we just did not sound very good. Mr. Pickell is also very helpful outside the context of the marching band, including making time in his day to help students do the AP Music Theory class independent study, and allowing band kids to hang out in the band room with him, giving a nice social area for all of us. Therefore, replacing Mr. Pickell with Dr. Seybert at the marching band, which looks very likely to happen, would be devastating to the marching band program and to the music department in general. Mr. Pickell is very welcoming to outside students, and to students who join the marching band with little to no music experience. Dr. Seybert tends to focus on the few kids who are very serious, while almost completely isolating the people who are doing it for fun and who do not want to be music majors. The general consensus is that if Dr. Seybert were to take charge of the marching band, we would all leave and do something else with our time. This does include the serious future music majors of the band.

We would hate to leave the marching band, especially after, for some members, three loyal and successful years in the band, but we simply have no choice. We recognize that there was a similar mass exodus whenever Dr. Seybert took over the high school jazz bands in favor of Mr. Wayland, but this would be of much, much greater proportions. Again, we would hate to do this to the band, but there is no other option. We are asking you to not force us down this path. Please reinstate Mr. Pickell to the marching band and please let us have a successful future with the band and with Mr. Pickell.