October lesson information

 Hello, October and welcome cooler weather!

Whew!  What a busy month September ended up being!  I added several more students than I expected this year.  My schedule is pretty full, so I will almost certainly have to start a waiting list at some schools if there are more lesson sign ups.  The good news for you is: 1.) You're IN; and 2.) My scheduling should start to settle into a fairly predictable routine with the usual exceptions - holidays, picture days, etc.

Speaking of exceptions - I will be out of town this Wednesday through Friday.  I will be in touch with those students whom I haven't already let know about the schedule that affects.  And speaking of holidays - Monday is Columbus Day.  Most schools have that day off, but I may see a few students that day where appropriate.  Some schools are off Tuesday as well.  Again, I'll be in touch about schedules.

If you are one of my new students, welcome to my studio!  I have a couple of blog posts that you should read that may help acquaint you with lessons with me:

    https://www.hudsonmusicstudio.com/2020/10/welcome-new-flute-students.html

    https://www.hudsonmusicstudio.com/2020/04/how-to-pay-for-lessons-in-remote.html

Thanks to all of you for such a wonderful start to the school year!  And a special thanks to you parents for supporting your child in their love of music!

August Invoice and September Lesson Info

Happy Labor Day!!!

It's been great seeing all of my students again!  I'm looking forward to all of the band activities this fall.  It's such a fun and exciting time with marching band performances and so many beginners starting every year.

And on the thought of beginners, I have a large number of new students, beginners and otherwise, as I always do this time of year.  If you are one of my new students, welcome to my studio!  I have a couple of blog posts that you should read that may help acquaint you with lessons with me:

    https://www.hudsonmusicstudio.com/2020/10/welcome-new-flute-students.html

    https://www.hudsonmusicstudio.com/2020/04/how-to-pay-for-lessons-in-remote.html

And with lots of new students, as always, comes scheduling challenges.  This year, my schedule has been especially complicated to get set up.  Several schools have changed their schedules, and bands and flute classes have changed times.  It's not unexpected, but there was more of that this year than normal.  But, like I always say, flexibility is key!  I have worked very hard to make sure I have all of my current students scheduled, and have left a little room for some more new students, which always happens through the first few months of school.  Hopefully I won't have to change lesson times for many of you going forward, but I know that there will be at least a few changes that will come up unexpectedly.  Just keep that flexibility in mind as we go forward, and it should all work out.

If you received a link to this with your August invoice, please remember that payment is expected upon receipt.  As always, if you need to make payment arrangements, please let me know.

September lessons are off to a great start!  I look forward to seeing all of my students' progress this week!

August Flute Lesson and July Invoice information

 And so ends summer break!  I hope everyone had a great one, and found time for fun and family.  And, while I'm sure we're all sad to see it end, I'm really looking forward to another exciting year seeing my students' improvements and successes!

I will be out of town for the next week, so there are no lessons planned until 8/15.  That coincides with the first week of school for most of you, and that's always a difficult time to schedule lessons, so that works out.

As school starts, I will, as always this time of year, be adding in a lot of new students.  That, combined with the various schools and band programs I work with changing or adjusting their schedules, means that we may not have a set schedule for the first few weeks as I put the many pieces of my schedule puzzle together.  The name of the game here is flexibility.  I will communicate with each of you about my schedule, and will give as much notice as possible of changes, but there will be inevitable hiccups along the way. So, when those happen, I will do my best to make up any misses along the way.  Usually this takes 3 or 4 weeks for everything to start smoothing out, so until then, no worries, just stay flexible.  And, as I add in all of those new students over the next month or so, you may see a reminder about this in upcoming emails and blog posts.

August is the month where I will adjust lesson rates depending upon your school and/or district's guidelines.  If your child was in 8th grade, and they are now in high school and the high school has a higher rate, or of your school or district has adjusted rates, that change will take place on the August invoice that you will receive in September.

And speaking of invoices, Paul, my husband who helps with the billing, noticed an error in our database that caused a miscalculation in just a few of the June invoices related to the switch to the billing-after system.  He thinks he has it corrected in the July invoice, so if you see a discrepancy between what the June invoice said was due and what the July invoice has for a balance forward, that is probably the issue. Not all invoices were affected  As always, in any case, if there's something there that doesn't make sense, please let us know and we will check it and go over it with you if needed.  Billing-after is here to stay, so hopefully we won't run into anymore kinks with the database, and then all we will have to worry about is human error.  =)

I look forward to seeing all of my students at school soon!

May lesson invoice info - Billing after is here! Summer lessons

We made it!  Summer break is here!

First off, congratulations to my many students in their various contests over the last few months.  So many great performances and First Division Ratings!  I'm proud of all of you!

As we discussed last month, we have switched to a "bill-after" system for our invoices.  We expect this to be a permanent change for the foreseeable future. We have big plans for an "enhanced online presence"  which would include, among other things, a portal for parents to keep track of lessons and make payments.  But we are realistic, and very busy, so progress in that direction will be very slow, probably years, before we are ready to roll it out to my students.  So, unless we run into a major obstacle, we will keep the bill-after system in place, though the actual invoices may get tweaked every now and then.

Since we are billing for lessons after the fact, we now expect payment in full of the total now due at the time of the invoice.  I know that this is different, as I have always allowed parents to make payment arrangements that suited their schedule.  I want to reassure you that I am still very flexible, and if you need a little more time to pay, just let me know, and we will work it out.  You can still pay before the invoice comes out if you need to pay after your payday from your employer, or whatever your situation is, so that it works out for you just as it did before.

One thing that we did change since last month's post is that we will not include information on the invoice for the coming month, at least through the summer.  Instead, I will discuss upcoming lessons and schedule with each of you as I contact you to set up lessons.  Summer is always very fluid, with travel, varying school and band schedules, and holidays of course, so it always seems to be very unpredictable.  So, once I have your child's schedule figured out with you, you can use that information to pay-as-you-go or pay in advance if you choose to do so.  Once we get to September, and school is back in session, we may add the coming month lesson information back to the invoice if it seems like it won't cause too much confusion.

I am currently setting up lessons for the summer.  I have had a much stronger than usual response, so I am pleased that so many of you are signed up.  I do still have plenty of spots left each week, so please contact me if you would like to have a lesson or lessons this summer.  You can just schedule with me each week as you are available, or we can have a plan for weeks in advance.  Whatever works best for you.

Unless there is something unexpected that affects everyone come up, I probably will not have a June or July blog post, but will put something up in August as we approach the start of school.

I look forward to see all those who are having summer lessons!  Either way, have a great summer, and safe travels!

April Statements, billing changes coming in May, looking forward to summer lessons

Good evening!

I hope everyone had a great holiday break!  Now we are in the thick of contest season, state assessments, and the race to the end of school!

As we have mentioned before, we are always working on making our lesson billing as easy for you to understand and easy for us to process as possible.  If you've had lessons with me for some time, you know that there have been many iterations of the invoices since we started our new system a couple years ago.  But, it seems that we keep falling short of making it work in all situations, and we know what the real culprit is: billing in advance.  It's the policy of all of the school districts where I teach that lesson teachers are supposed to bill in advance, and I understand the reasoning of the requirement - it protects the lesson teachers and the district.  I'll refrain form explaining all that here as it is a long story, but I have always tried to do that as requested.  The problem for us, myself and Paul - my husband who helps me with the billing, is that for billing in advance to make sense to all of you, the wonderful parents of my wonderful students whom I love very much, who pay for those lessons, we would have to be able to send out those invoices exactly on the first of every month so that those who pay a little later have every payment accounted for on that invoice.  But, as I'm sure all of you can relate, that just doesn't work out for us most months.  Hopefully, in future iterations of our billing system, this will become more automated, and maybe then we'll make it work, but for now we know that it doesn't.

So, as we approach summer, we will go to a "billing after" system, similar to we did last summer, hopefully better, with the intent of keeping that system in place going forward after that. Here's how we are thinking it will work for now.  This is subject to change, so we will make a new post here with details as things develop.

• This April invoice will be the last "bill in advance" invoice
• We will not send an invoice for May until after the first of June; June's invoice won't come until July, etc.
• The next invoice will still state the number of expected lessons for the coming month, but the amount due will only be calculated based on the number of lessons your child has actually had
• You can still pay in advance and we recommend that you do that.  If you want to do that, and have paid for the previous month's bill before the end of that month, refer to the expected number of lessons on the previous invoice, or just send me an email or a text around the time you're ready to pay, and I'll let you know how many lessons I expect your child to receive that month.  However, I probably will not be able to let you know about any past due balances or credits you may have (that's Paul's department,) so, as I said, it only works if you've paid the previous month in full.
• If you don't choose to pay before the end of the month, we will expect payment in full at the time we send the invoice.  Yes, we will still make payment arrangements like before, but since we are billing after the time when you would have normally made that payment, the expectation will be that you pay in full when you receive the invoice.
• This is still a work in progress, so we may make changes as we go.

We are still in testing season with the bulk of the STAAR tests happening the first week of May.  I will be out of town part of May 2, and all of May 3 and 4, which is during those testing days.  I will be in touch to reschedule lessons where I can, but I won't be able to work everyone in that week.  At some point on or after May 17, I will stop lessons for the rest of the semester, and I will start my summer lesson schedule in June.  I will have more details about that in May.

Good luck to everyone with the various contests and testing!

March Invoice - Upcoming State Assessments

I hope everyone had a great Spring Break!  It was nice having our son back from college for a few days, but as the dates for the break did not line up across the various districts I teach in, I ended up working most of the days anyway.  Oh well.  I did have some lighter days and and a couple of days off, so it wasn't too bad.

State assessment testing begins April 5, including various high school end-of-course exams and STAAR tests, and these will continue off and on through the first few weeks of May.  Different school campuses have different rules for allowing lesson teachers on campus to teach students who are not testing that day.  I will be checking on that with all the schools I teach at, and if it is possible to teach your child on one of those days, I may try to schedule a lesson.  I will be in touch with each of you individually if that is the case.

Also, April 15 and/or April 18 are school holidays for some districts.  I may move some lessons around to accommodate those days as well.  Like always, I will do what I can to make sure every student gets a lessons every week if it is at all possible.

I don't know about you, but we sure are enjoying the weather.  Here's to warmer temperatures and longer days!

February Invoice, Looking Towards March

 Good Evening!

What a February it has been!  Icy weather, snow days, TMEA, and Presidents' Day Holidays, at least for some of you.  And more icy weather in the forecast!  I don't know about you, but I'm hoping it misses up this time.

So, just going with the trend, it looks like we're just in a pattern of billing mid-month.  It not the way we like to do it, and I apologize for any inconvenience it may cause any of you.  Hopefully schedules, both from the school and in my personal life, will settle down and become a little more predictable soon.

Looking forward to March, different districts have different dates for Spring Break.  Usually I would try to work it out so that I would have a whole week off in between the two, but it doesn't look like I will be able to do that this time.  As we get closer, if I think I can make it work, I'll be in touch with any schedule changes.  For now, though, I'm just planning on keeping everyone at their regular times.

And, I don't know about you, but I'm looking forward to some warmer weather, and Daylight Saving Time with later sunsets.  Bike rides anyone?