By NEAL WAGNER / Managing Editor

ALABASTER – The band programs at Thomson High School and Thompson Middle School soon will have several new school-owned instruments after the city’s Board of Education approved the purchases during a recent meeting.

The School Board voted unanimously during its March 14 meeting to purchase more than $55,000 in new instruments for the two band programs.

School Board members agreed to accept a $35,714 bid from the Gadsden Music Company and to accept a $20,450 bid from Art’s Music Shop to purchase the new instruments.

The bids’ acceptance came a few weeks after the Board of Education voted to issue a request for proposals for companies interested in selling the new instruments to the Alabaster band programs.

THS Director of Bands Jon Bubbett said the new instruments will be used by the schools’ concert and marching bands, and will include large instruments such as tubas, euphoniums and marimbas, which can cost thousands of dollars each.

One of the instruments on the list was a Yamaha tuba, which carried an about $9,000 price tag, which is cost-prohibitive for students and their parents to purchase.

The purchases will include eight new instruments for TMS and 11 new instruments for the high school. The new instruments will expand the inventory of school-owned instruments, and will help replace some instruments in use for multiple decades, Bubbett said.

Bubbett previously said the school band booster club has worked over the past few decades to ensure the band programs’ instrument needs have been met, but said the school system’s help will take some of the fundraising pressure off the boosters.