Again - what was the reason given?

Just curious, since, as I said, I teach in the area.

I know it will probably cost more, but can your students do NATS competitions instead, since no in-house one is being offered? Since you mentioned NATS teachers - IHSA has no such requirement for qualifications of their judges. I would trust your choir director's judgement on quality judges more than IHSA.

I'm hoping that the number of schools that are starting to do in-house S&E contests will wake IHSA up to the fact that there's a problem with the structure of their "competition". There is no direction on level of repertoire, or quality control of the judging. A student coming in singing a pop song is judged on the same level as a student singing Faure - when the pop song gets a Division I rating, while the Faure gets the Division II, what does that teach the students? The decision was made to pull out before I got to this school, but I'm glad it was done. When I had taken students at my previous school, the experience was mediocre at best, damaging at worst. Of course, there needs to be an alternative available if the school pulls out. There are a number of private competitions in the area - Swedish Days in Geneva comes to mind immediately, but I know there are others as well.

Like I said, I'd like to know what reasons were given, and who made the decision - the director or the district. To me, if another school in the district is still doing it, it seems as if the decision was the director's and not the district's.