I was a faculty advisor for SING for many years at Forest Hills High School in Forest Hills, NY from about 1991-2004. It was a wonderful way for students to be involved. They did just about everything with the show: casting it, directing it, buying and making props, painting the canvas backdrops, and choreographing it. Three students worked as commissioners attending to one grade each, and then each grade had two student directors who worked together. Our freshmen and sophomore classes joined forces to become the sophmen versus the juniors and then the seniors. The seniors usually won, but our juniors did win a few times too. When I worked on it, our sophmen never won, but they had great potential. We had three to four judges (some teachers who from our school, some teachers from other schools, and some of my friends who were involved in theater) who were given a score sheet with categories to rate and then were brought to the principal's conference room to tally up their scores. There was no prize to be won, just the honor of knowing your show was the best!
SING has changed in many ways, but it is still around. At one point many other Queens schools had SING: Bayside, John Bowne, Flushing, Cardozo, just to name a few.
My current school, Francis Lewis High School in Fresh Meadows, is bringing it back after many, many years of it not being done. Good things come back sometimes!
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