Tuesday, November 20, 2012 · Band Room, KPS
Welcome everyone!
Meeting was called to order by President Lynn Cooper.
16 Parents are in attendance.
We weren‘t able to view the minutes. A motion to waive the reading of the minutes was made by Doreen Sheen and a 2nd by Todd Oschner. The minutes will be sent out by email so everyone will be able to read them.
Treasurer’s Report: was given by Tammy Madsen.
Paid marching instructors: Colorguard $1600 Pit $800 Drumline $800. One of the instructors opted to use part of their pay to increase the other instructors pay to $1000, so there was $600 of the instructors pay that wasn’t used.
There were no questions/discussion.
Fundraising Ideas: The students are able to do 2 fundraisers in which they sell out of a catalog a year or cat cards. The following fundraisers can all be used in conjunction with the other fundraisers the students are already committed to.
Custom cards: Like a Catcard, we get to choose which vendors are on the card. They sell for $10.00, we would receive $5.00 per card profit. 180 cards seems to have the best profit margin.
Scentsy Party: 20% profit Gigi Call. If you hold a Scentsy party, Gigi will donate her 20% to your students account.
Poker night
Split the pot at football games or basketball game.
Chili Cook off – possibly in conjunction with the exhibition. 1 big pot of chili for everyone to use, but the contestants make a smaller pot for the contest and everyone to taste a smaller portion of. Everyone is the judge.
Soup supper/sloppy joes and desserts at the basketball games; set up in between the gym and the concessions area. Or maybe a Saturday game promote the supper to the opposing team’s school.
Fireworks booth – We have heard of being able to earn $10,000. Mr. and Mrs. Widger have done this in the past and may be a great reference. There was some concern that the market is really saturated with fireworks stands right now. One family is no longer raising money selling fireworks because of this reason. It is really hard to get your foot into the door with a major fireworks company. The companies don’t want to have too many of their stands within an area, their profits won’t be as good. This family would be willing to donate their stand if we want it. If we do that we may need to not do cruise nite. A lot of money to be made in a short time.
Scrip Cards – Many churches and schools have this program in place, it is on-going, not a short-term fundraiser. Gift cards for businesses and your organization will receive a portion of the price of the gift cart.
Each business has a different percentage. Will maybe need a separate account to handle the payments. Gift cards are purchased through automatic withdrawal from the account and then the cards are mailed to the organization to be delivered to the purchaser. Turn around is about 3 days. You could possibly have stock onhand for immediate delivery. They have software available if it is something we want to look into. With several groups in the area already involved with this program, a concern was brought up about if it would still be profitable for us. The feeling was that we aren’t taking away from the other organizations. It isn’t a one-time event like a cat card, but something that is on-going. So someone could buy from both or all organizations, depending on what each person feels they would like there donation to go. Individuals cannot pay with a credit card, it is an automatic withdrawal only. glscrip.com
Playoff – we make an evening of competition between the kids. Sell tickets to attend and sell ballots to goofy contests ie; who can play the longest note, or play the loudest. The person that guesses the most correct, will win a prize.
We would vote on how the funds raised would be used, instrument fund, student accounts, general fund.
In the past the band parents function has been to support the directors mission and to raise money for the band trips. Recently more has been asked of the organization to help pay for things that are normally funded by the directors budget. The band boosters was started in hopes to relieve some of the pressure to have the band parents pay for things the school district used to cover.
No one volunteered to chair/co-chair these fundraising opportunities or to look into the function/profitability. This will be tabled for another month.
Directors Comments
Underclassman honors band: January 14th for 9th and 10th graders. There has been a great response from area directors. Dr. Neil Schnoor will do the honor band for us. There won’t be an audition, you will only be able to get in by nomination. The directors will nominate and then we will create an ensemble based on the nominations. There is no honor band for 9th graders across the state. This is a great opportunity to raise money and give the kids another opportunity to perform. The rehearsal and concert will be at the Merryman.
Marching season went very well. The performance at NSBA was the best performance of the year and the kids felt great about their performance.
Focus shifting on marching bands. Do we want to reach toward Omaha bands, or do we want to continue our style of marching band. 2 different philosophies, comparing bands to each other or comparing to a standard.
Festival vs. Competition: Performing to meet a standard or performing for a placement in a group of bands such as 15th place of 20 bands. Do we want to put all our resources into staff, instruments, programming to be able to compete to the level of Bellevue East/West. Or do we want to focus on performing really well at the type of shows we are doing now. Our scores were within a couple of points of where we scored last year and our placement was about where we were last year. Our show was harder, drill and music both and our kids were a lot younger. More underclassman than upperclassmen compared to past years.
All State Convention: We had 6 kids this year, from band, orchestra, jazz band, and Choir. Honor bands are still coming up, please encourage your kids to try out. They learn so much from the process, even if they don’t make the honor band.
There are a lot of promising things beginning with the marching festival, tailgate, and underclassman honor band. It is encouraging to see great things happening for the kids. The new events will catch on and continue to grow.
Jazz Band Concert attendance: It was a little disappointing. It is hard for the students to perform at their best when there are only a couple of hundred people to play for. The experience just isn’t the same as when you perform for a full house. There was a lot of great music being played and not a lot were able to experience it.
We need to get the word out better, for all of the concerts. If anyone would like to help with that to be able to have the concerts advertised, we would greatly appreciate it.
Would like to have the bands submit a jazz ensemble recording to the NSBA’s conference. The end of the conference there will be a concert band festival we are hoping to be able to take the Wind Ensemble to perform in that concert. They would be performing for music teachers and future teachers. They would perform and then go to another room and get immediate feedback from the judges on their performance. We would probably have to make some cuts in other areas in order to make that happen.
Pep Band: Students will need to be at the school ready to perform 45 minutes prior to the game to warm up.
Hoop heads: We still have hoop heads for sale!
Concert attire: Wind Ensemble all black; Concert Band and Symphonic Band dress nice, no jeans
Uniform turn in: We would like to turn them in earlier than last year. Liberty cleaners would like them all within a certain time frame to use the discount.
Concert advertising: can we put them in grocery stores on the bulletin boards or in churches, the library or gas stations. We could possibly have an art student design a flier and then have people distribute them. The college may have a student that needs a project for their class. Mrs. McFadden would be a great resource here at the high school.
Basketball concessions: sign up sheets to work concessions provided by Jeanne Thorne and Arlene Jones. You are able to sign up 3 times per student. Sign up genius will be used later, but you will be able to sign up quicker here at the meetings.
A motion to adjourn was made by Todd Oschner and a 2nd by Ed Uden .
Upcoming events
- December 11th Band Parent Meeting @ 7:30 P.M.
- December 10th Band Concert
- January 8th Band Parent Meeting @ 7:30 P.M.
- January 14th Underclassman Honor Band @ Merryman
- January 18th – 20th Winter Winds Honor Band @ UNL
- January 21st UNK Honor Band
- January 25th – 27th UNO Honor Festival
- January 31 – Feb 2nd Hastings Honor Band
- February 1st Big Band Dance
- February 5th Band Parent Meeting @ 7:30
- February 7th – 9th Weslyan Honor Band
- February 22nd -23rd UNO Jazz Festival
March 5th Band Parent Meeting @ 7:30
