Friday,  June 13, 2014 • Vol. 16--No. 330 • 3 of 35

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• The artwork will be displayed in the concourse of the Denny Sanford Premier Center in Sioux Falls during the State AA boys basketball tournament. Awards will include team sweepstakes, individual medals, best of show and people's choice. Plans call for eight of the more significant awards to be presented during halftime of the championship basketball game.
• That plan raised some concern for board members who noted that the halftime is already crowded with award presentations and recognitions.
• "It's such a busy halftime," said board chairman Darren Paulson of Rapid City.
• Weaver promised to keep the presentations short and made the case for cross-promoting SDHSAA activities.
• "It would be nice to have some sort of level of recognition," Weaver said. "We may as well utilize the crowd at the basketball game."
• Weaver is also expecting crowds for the show choir performances that will be a sanctioned event in the 2015-16 school year. He estimated that there will be 30 to 40 schools offering the activity.
• Weaver gave board members an overview of the activity which will have its first competition in January 2016 and its first statewide festival that April. The board approved sanctioning the activity and left it to Weaver and the music advisory committee to work out the details.
• The board also approved a variety of changes in the SDHSAA Fine Arts Handbook that provides the rules and regulations that govern fine arts activities.
• Among those changes was combining serious prose and serious plays into one "serious" category in oral interpretation and adding "storytelling." The storytelling theme in 2014-15 will be Grimm's Fairy Tales.
• The board also approved a dress code for music students taking part in All-State concerts. Boys will wear a suit with a shirt and tie. Girls may wear a dress but it must be of a length that will cover the knees while the student is seated.
• Students often perform on an elevated stage and Weaver explained that short dresses can make it "awkward for the audience as well as the participants."
• He said some concern was expressed about the extra cost as some female students were wearing their prom dresses to avoid the expense of buying another outfit.
• "The focus should not be on what you're wearing," Weaver said.
• An item of interest that required no board action was an initiative to limit the host locations for All-State Band to communities served by major airlines.
• Weaver said a guest conductor at an All-State Band performance in Pierre was forced to have his wife drive from their home in Colorado to get him home in time to

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