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Music store owners question the validity of a ranking list given to parents of students around the county.
By KENT FISCHER
© St. Petersburg Times, published October 8, 2001
A decade ago, Pasco County students were some of Jim Stanelun's best customers. From instrument rentals and repair to sheet music sales, band programs provided his store, Music Center of Holiday, with steady business.
Today, that business is all but gone.
For the past several years he has done little business with local schools or students, he says, because he won't allow district administrators to inspect his shop. The district has been inspecting local music stores since 1995, and it uses the information it collects to rank the stores on, among other things, customer service, quality of instruments and their repair shops.
Band directors then distribute the rankings to parents, some of whom use the evaluations to guide where they go to buy and rent instruments, local shop owners say.
"What do they know about me, and what qualifications do they have to do this?" Stanelun said. "Who are they to look at my workshop and tell me that it's insufficient? I started this business from scratch 18 years ago, and I'm still here, so I must be doing something right."
Stanelun has company. Owners of three other locally owned stores say they too don't like the district's ratings. They say the evaluations are unfair, inaccurate and made by people who have no experience running a music store. Moreover, they question why the district has assumed a Consumer Reports role when it comes to music shops.
"I try not to pay it any attention any more," said Al Partridge, who opened Musician's Supply on Trouble Creek Road in 1972. "Who are they to come in and judge my store? I don't care if I ever see another dollar from the schools."
School officials began rating music stores in 1995 after local pawnshops requested that they be allowed to market their hocked instruments to students. About the same time, the district began hearing complaints from parents who were not happy with the instruments they had purchased for their children. The parents wanted to know why band directors didn't steer them away from disreputable stores.
"Parents were asking us for help," said Kathleen Sanz, the district administrator who oversees music and band programs. "We'd get letters all the time that said, 'I just spent $400 on an instrument that doesn't play.' "
So in 1994, Sanz and several band directors outlined what they expected of local music stores and the equipment they sold or rented to students. The following school year, band directors fanned out across Tampa Bay, visiting stores and ranking them in 10 different areas grading them on a scale of 1 to 5.
"This is done to make sure that parents aren't buying bad equipment," said Jon Sever, the band director at River Ridge High School. "It will also help the vendor understand what we want . . . and that they have to stand behind what they sell."
Owners of four Pasco stores said they wonder if there isn't an ulterior motive. They cite the low scores that every Pasco store received, while the top-ranked stores are located in Brooksville, Pinellas and Lakeland.
"Why are they pushing our business out of the county?" said Partridge, the owner of Musician's Supply. "We pay our taxes here. Who's going to drive to Lakeland to rent a flute?"
Although the district does not have a policy against employees recommending one business over another, Sanz said band directors are not to tell parents where to shop. Store owners, though, contend that the district evaluations do essentially that. Handing a parent a list of stores that have been ranked is akin to endorsing the shops with the best marks, said Marcia Jones, who owns the Happy Tunes music store in Land O'Lakes.
Sanz said that's not true.
"No, we are not endorsing certain stores over others," she said. "All we are doing is providing parents with information, statistical information."
One parent, Roxana Padley of Land O'Lakes, looked at the information before renting a flute for her daughter Brittany. In the end, the scores didn't matter to her so much as convenience: She went to the store closest to her house, Happy Tunes in Land O'Lakes.
That was two years ago and, so far, Padley has been pleased with the service she has received at Happy Tunes.
"We've had no problems at all," Mrs. Padley said. "Whenever we've needed a repair, we've gotten it right back and the service has been great."
The state Department of Education said it knows of no other district that evaluates local businesses. The department also said it could find no law preventing schools from doing such ratings.
So why hasn't the district expanded its business inspections to include sporting goods stores, school supply stores or art supply outlets? After all, students spend a lot of money in those stores too, said Stanelun, the owner of Music Center of Holiday.
The difference, Sanz said, is that band is a curricular course and kids' grades suffer when they play inferior equipment or when their instruments spend weeks at the repair shop. That's not true for athletics, which is an extracurricular activity.
"This is a curricular course, and it's a huge investment for many of our parents," Sanz said. "Music stores will sell you what they want to sell you."
Partridge's store, Musician's Supply located at 4738 Trouble Creek Road in New Port Richey, has consistently received poor marks from school district inspectors.
He's received the lowest rating -- a 1 -- for his service to the schools and for "vendor experience," even though he's been in business for 30 years and, at one time, was west Pasco schools' predominant supplier of sheet music and instrument repairs. In the 10 areas the district evaluated his store, Partridge averaged a score of 2.5, on a scale of 1 to 5.
Partridge said staying in business means depending on parents who "think for themselves" and aren't "led around by the nose by the band directors."
Owners also questioned how up to date the evaluations are.
The owners of Encore Music in Port Richey were surprised to see their store listed among those that had been inspected by the school district. The owners said they weren't aware Encore had been evaluated. Nobody interviewed them, and they were not asked to fill out any kind of survey, said co-owners Brian Trapani and Ed Dlugokinskicq.
That's because Encore's inspection occurred at least three years before Trapani and Dlugokinski took over the store, Sanz said. Since then, they've moved it to a new location and updated its inventory. They've also recently expanded the store's sales floor to include more band instruments. But parent's would never know that if they operated solely on the information provided by the district, Trapani said.
"I can't say that I know where these (district ratings) came from," Trapani said when a reporter showed him his store's rankings. "We've made a lot of changes and we've added a lot of inventory" over the years.
According to the district's ratings, Encore's "quality of facility" rates a 3 out of 5, even though nobody from the district has ever evaluated the store's new location or inventory.
Trapani also pointed out that his store received a score of 4 in the category of "quality of instrument rental," yet the St. Petersburg store Bringe Music received a 5. Encore gets all of its rental instruments from Bringe.
"They're the same instruments," he said. "Why didn't we get a 5 too?"
Sanz said that the district sends all stores, including Encore, letters each June stating that the district would reinspect their stores if the owners requested it. Trapani said he never got the letter.
Not every store owner, though, believes that the rankings are off the mark. Sharon Stone, who manages Makin' Music in Brooksville, said she has used the district's evaluation criteria to improve her store's inventory and rental program. The results have meant more business from Pasco schools over the several years, she said.
During its last evaluation, Makin' Music received the highest score possible in eight of the 10 areas evaluated.
"We used the criteria to see what we needed to do to become one of the top vendors," Stone said. "Let's stop all this bickering and focus on the children. The criteria is there as a working tool to make your business better."
Sanz said that is exactly the attitude that she hoped store owners would take when confronted with low scores.
"The quality of the instruments and of the stores really has improved" since the district started its inspections, Sanz said. "I really think that this has made a significant difference in the quality of the instruments our students are now playing."