New student open house occured on Wednesday at Schiel Primary School for Arts Enrichment. A table was set up for parents to turn in/pick up registrations. This was also a great opportunity for parents, as well as the new students, to meet Mary Anne and ask questions about the dance program. The open house was a great success. There was much interest in the program and registration forms are beginning to pour in. In fact, the kindergarten class is already closed!

Before the open house could come together, I was given the tedious task of folding/stapleing over 800 copies of the new and improved registration brochure (between Schiel and North Avondale Montessori Schools). This of course took a lot of time, but it was exciting to see the changes. The old registration form was simply a one-sided legal size piece of paper. The brochure is much easier to read (four pages) and includes pictures of some of the performances from previous years.

The structure of both The Cincinnati Dance and Movement Center and Mary Anne Schaeper's Dance Programs are an entrepreneurship. At the helm is Tina Marie Prentosito for the CDMC and Mary Anne for her own programs. Both of them have been my supervisor during this summer internship. Both organizations are service-based with their financial success directly relative to student enrollment. I think a big challenge during the past school year and into the summer months (which traditionally is a slower time) has been to revive enrollment numbers given the current sluggish economy. Dance classes are considered by most to be a luxury, not a necessity. However, the popularity of television shows such as "Dancing with the Stars", "So You Think You Can Dance", and "America's Got Talent" seems to have brought dance training programs back into the radar for parents.

A recent challenge for Tina has been the transition into a new company name, "The Cincinnati Dance and Movement Center". More than simply new signage and logo is the long transition process beginning with obtaining copy rights, researching comparables, updating and overhauling a web site, and increased advertisement to announce new name (same business). Newspaper advertisements and Open Houses on various weekday evenings or week-end days seem to be the most effective marketing tools.

Mary Anne's personal challenge is to be able to continue to offer the high standard of teaching that she does in an economically depressed neighborhood school. With many scholarships being offered, and many sustaining delinquent accounts, it is difficult to maintain a cost-effective balance while trying to fulfill a personal mission of non-exclusion. In other words, Mary Anne has never turned away an ambitious student who was not able to pay. The classes are fee-based about half the cost of tuition at dance studios. This is off-set by the support system of the home-based school (principal, teachers, maintenance staff and other personnel). However, Mary Anne is implementing a new contract this year that will need to be signed by parents agreeing to policies regarding payment, attendance and behavior guidelines. I have been involved in the formulation of this new document.


Lately, one of my main focuses for Mary Anne is to create an updated ledger on Excel. This ledger is an alphabetical listing of the total enrollment and an eight column debit/credit posting. I am following the same format she used for last school year, but am adding a color code for paid/not paid students. Enrollment is slow right now, but with open house at Schiel Primary School Wednesday night, we are expecting many more registrations.