Welcome back to the grind. My sincerest wishes go out to all of you that the shock of returning from your divinely wonderful break does not overwhelm you, nor deter you from the memories you accumulated while frolicking on vacation. Okay, down to the business of starting again.

SoloChair.com is back; improved, updated, and ready to go, as of September 1. If you are a new teacher, you must log on to SoloChair. com and create an account for yourself prior to registering, as all festival registration is done on-line; there is no paper registration. The instructions on SoloChair.com are very user-friendly and easy to follow.

If you are a returning teacher to SoloChair. com, please update your account profile, as without these updates you might not gain access to the festival for which you’d like to register. Please remember to click “submit” before closing the page.

A new feature that has been added upon registration is the ability to list the alternate schools in which you teach and will be registering; your invoice will be mailed to your primary school address that is listed on your account profi le.

Registration begins at 5:00 AM on September 1, with out-of-area registrations (i.e. a director from Area II wanting to attend a festival in Area VI) becoming available on September 15. Our refund deadline for large group festivals as always is December 1. Refunds will not be granted after the December 1 deadline unless it is CMEA Bay Section that cancels any event for which you’d registered.

Refunds will be mailed to you before this December 1 deadline if after you register you realize there is a confl ict you are unable to resolve. If you do fi nd yourself in the position of needing to move, or change your initial registration from one to site to another, you can do so, with our assistance, without penalty; you’ll need to notify the Executive Treasurer, or the site host(s), or me, in order to complete that process.

It is extremely important that you meet your three week window for festival fees receipt to our Treasurer, Sandy Miller. The invoice states that your fees should be received within three weeks of registering. However, if you do not meet this deadline, you will not be automatically dropped from the festival; rather, you will receive a courtesy notice from Sandy reminding you that your fee has not been received. At this time, please be courteous enough to respond to her with an explanation. I would like to reinforce the statement that you will not automatically be dropped from any festival without fi rst being notifi ed. We appreciate and encourage your participation in festivals; therefore, every attempt will be made to contact you.

We suffered quite a loss during the 2007 festival season due to several directors failing to pay fees of festivals they’d (actually) attended. If you do not pay your fee(s) prior to the date of the site host’s festival logistic mailing, and you fail to notify our Treasurer or me after repeated attempts to contact you, you will be notifi ed (again) via email, and/or phone, and/or hard copy mailing that you have been dropped from the festival.

Our Band/Orchestra and Orchestra Festivals have been re-named to refl ect your Area, as opposed to region, AND we’ve added a few new festivals to accommodate needs that arose in various areas:

Band/Orchestra North is now Band/ Orchestra II/VII

B/O South is now B/O V/VIII

B/O East is now B/O III, and we’ve added a (one day) B/O IV, as well as a (one day) -Band IV

Orchestra West is now Orchestra I/VI

Orchestra South is now Orchestra V/ VIII

We’ve added an additional two day B/O festival in Area II; B/O IIa to be held at San Ramon Valley HS and B/O IIb to be held at Deer Valley HS, in addition to a two day Band festival at Ygnacio Valley HS.

We’ve unfortunately eliminated the Jazz Solo portion of the Jazz Solo/Combo festival due to extremely low enrollment over the last three years. Jazz Combo (8:00–12:00) festival and Vocal Jazz (1:00–5:00) festival will run on the same day; please refer to the CMEA website for further information, rules and procedures.

You will notice that our large group registration fee has increased by $25 (up to $175) still proving that CMEA provides mucho “bang for your buck”.

Our new webmaster, Steve Hendee, has been updating the look of our www. cmeabaysection.org website which will off er a more in-depth availability to information, resources, articles and more, including several links about festivals that off er SoloChair.com registration instructions and information. In addition, for your convenience, you will now be able to access festival evaluation forms and adjudication evaluation forms from the CMEA website. How fantastic is that?

You’re ready, you’re optimistic. Your back– to–school experience will be satisfying. Hip, hip, hooray!