Hi Candlemommy! I checked your profile and like myself, you live in Illinois. There is a state funded agency called the Illinois Arts Council. This is a government agency. Their main purpose is to promote the arts throughout Illinois(ie. music, storytelling, visual art, etc) A large part of their mission is to promote arts in education. I have been working with them for the past three years and all their performers have been wonderful. The perfomers listed on their arts tour roster are selected by an advisory panel of experts assigned by the state. As their goal is to promote arts in education, they will also provide the opportunity to apply for grants to fund your assemblies. We have received grants yearly (usually about 30-35% of the cost of the performance). The funds are suppplied by the Illinois State Legislature and National Endowment for the Arts. If you want information about the assemblies we booked through them, feel free to e-mail me. Their website is www.state.il.us/agency/iac. Good luck!

I am a new PTO president and have a question about assemblies. Currently we split our assemblies fees with our school district 50/50 up to a certain amount. That's fine, but who do you have choose the topics. We have one teacher who I guess comes up with topics and asks teachers to vote on them. Most of the time they just say yes to get it over with. My concern is that some of them I just don't see relevance! We had a magician that supposedly incorp. a need to read them. Not very well I don't think. So my question is who do you have pick speakers/topics to make sure they are relevant and appealing to all.