School of Rock SORDC Taking money from parents who already paid!? RIP OFF! Ashburn, Virginia

Hi everyone, we're the School of Rock of Greater Washington DC and we'd like to respond to the complaint made here.  We have already provided this information via several emails to the person making the complaint but apparently the answer wasn't satisfying. 

The background here is that our aim is to get our students playing in front of as many people as possible.  To that end we host a Battle of the Summer Camp bands that has all of the summer camp students from our Ashburn, Silver Spring and Vienna schools play in front of a large audience of cheering fans for the bragging rights of being one of the top three bands.  Before this big Battle of the Summer Camp Bands show these campers will have already performed in a regular summer camp show at a venue near their School of Rock location.  These shows are free of charge to everyone - parents, friends, etc. and posted on our website (www.sordc.com).  And by the way, they are a lot of fun.

The show in question is a large event with 90+ kids performing in it.  The costs to put on this show are substantial.  Besides the venue itself we need to rent the sound system with sound engineer and crew, pay for equipment transportation, rent the stage, pay our staff who are herding the kids, print programs and color award certificates, provide each camper with a custom-printed dog tag (a keepsake), buy gifts for the three judges (who decide on the winning bands), pay for event insurance, etc.  So yes, we sell tickets to pay for the event and operate as a business.  This event is optional for campers and the cost is not built into our camp fees.

We have kept the price of our summer camps the same for the last four years.  We know things are tough financially for a lot of people and we are sensitive to it.  We think charging for tickets instead of raising our camp prices is the best way to hold this event.  We have hundreds of campers come through our program and consistently get raves from the campers and parents.

Hi everyone, we're the School of Rock of Greater Washington DC and we'd like to respond to the complaint made here.  We have already provided this information via several emails to the person making the complaint but apparently the answer wasn't satisfying. 

The background here is that our aim is to get our students playing in front of as many people as possible.  To that end we host a Battle of the Summer Camp bands that has all of the summer camp students from our Ashburn, Silver Spring and Vienna schools play in front of a large audience of cheering fans for the bragging rights of being one of the top three bands.  Before this big Battle of the Summer Camp Bands show these campers will have already performed in a regular summer camp show at a venue near their School of Rock location.  These shows are free of charge to everyone - parents, friends, etc. and posted on our website (www.sordc.com).  And by the way, they are a lot of fun.

The show in question is a large event with 90+ kids performing in it.  The costs to put on this show are substantial.  Besides the venue itself we need to rent the sound system with sound engineer and crew, pay for equipment transportation, rent the stage, pay our staff who are herding the kids, print programs and color award certificates, provide each camper with a custom-printed dog tag (a keepsake), buy gifts for the three judges (who decide on the winning bands), pay for event insurance, etc.  So yes, we sell tickets to pay for the event and operate as a business.  This event is optional for campers and the cost is not built into our camp fees.

We have kept the price of our summer camps the same for the last four years.  We know things are tough financially for a lot of people and we are sensitive to it.  We think charging for tickets instead of raising our camp prices is the best way to hold this event.