Sisters salutes...

•Dixie Eckford, Earth Day event coordinator wrote: Three cheers and a big Sisters thank-you to all the volunteers who made the Earth Day Spring Clean event a huge success. Your enthusiastic hard work on Saturday resulted in over 80 bags of trash and hundreds of cigarette butts being removed from the high school grounds and disc golf area, local roadways, parks and city streets. Let's continue our commitment to care for our beautiful Sisters home by keeping it clean and restoring it to good health.

Together we can "Make every day Earth Day." Keep up the good work!•Tyler Cranor, instrumental music teacher at Sisters Middle School, wrote:

Kudos to our Sisters Middle School (SMS) band students for doing so well at the District Band Festival! In April, our SMS 7th-and 8th-grade band students performed for other Central Oregon bands (including Bend-La-Pine, Madras, Crook County and Burns) and a few renowned music educators from around the Northwest.

Band festivals are the time of year where bands get scored or graded. Personally, I do not put too much stock in subjective scoring, and music is obviously fairly subjective. I put much more weight in student participation, energy and community support - in ALL of which Sisters is exceptionally strong, and getting stronger.

That being said, my goal for this year was to attend the festival and receive an average adjudicators score of 60 (for reference, a competitive high school band at the state level might receive an 85-90). That would indicate a competent and healthy band, with a competence in all age-appropriate musical knowledge. It would also indicate a significant bump in score from the last time SMS participated, and with that a healthy growth of the program. I am proud to announce that we received an average score of 62!

As we go into next school year, and the 6th graders transition to 7th grade, my goals and expectations will increase. Having more musicians will mean that we can perform not only more complex music but a wider array of styles. This will undoubtedly help us reach our goal next year of an average score of 70. This would be a HUGE increase, but I think that it is attainable.

Thanks, SMS band students and parents, for all of your hard work and support!

•Sisters organizations provided key help to Project Uganda in their spring break trip (see related story, page 3).

"The airlines didn't charge us extra for excess luggage, but we were prepared for any luggage expenses thanks to The Roundhouse Foundation," said Sisters teacher Heather Johnson. "The Roundhouse Foundation donated $1,500 to the Central Oregon Days for Girls Organization to make more menstrual kits to go to Uganda. We were to use some of that funding it if we had any luggage expenses, but since we didn't it all went to The Central Oregon Days for Girls Organization!"

The Roundhouse Foundation also donated funds to the Sisters Graduate Resource Organization (GRO) that supported two of the students with their traveling expenses.

"Sisters GRO and Roundhouse were so excited to be able to support two of the students, Summer Roberson and Keegan Greaney, with funding to participate in this valuable experience," said Pam Olivier, a representative of GRO. "Sisters GRO administers The Roundhouse Foundation Experience Enrichment Scholarship."