Band Booster President: Frank Mason:
The meeting kicked off with a motion to approve the prior meeting minutes, which are already posted on the GHS BandNews blog, without changes.
Special Guest Visits GHS Band Booster – David Palpant
We were introduced to David Palpant this Monday, and a petition was circulated to collect signatures in support of his effort to get on the ballot for the Alachua County School Board District elections on 8/24/2010. He aims to represent District 1. We heard a little about him: He is a long time Sante Fe High School band parent and is a huge supporter of the arts in public school. Some of his goals include making the Alachua County School Board parent friendly, keeping the financials transparent, and keeping the arts in our schools. He also gave a holler for Wayne Gabb, a teacher at Tolbert Elementary school, who is also collecting ballot signatures to run in District 3. Elections are on 8/24/2010. There will be a large number of candidates for most of the school districts, and David fully expects run offs in the November elections. David wants to know what your concerns as a parent are. After he gets on the ballot, he will also greatly appreciate any donations supporters might like to make to his campaign. David says he’s “just about the kids.”
Mr. Pirzer’s News:
NEWS OF THINGS ALREADY PASSED:
Indoor percussion and color guard both finished 7th in their class at the Orlando State Competition. Mr. Pirzer said this was a good placement for both the color guard and the indoor drum line, and he was very encouraged by how the color guard came together for the finals, and noted that the competition was very strong. This was particularly true for the indoor drum line which had some very large teams compete.
MARCH OF DIMES: Thanks to all who was involved with this. The indoor band and staff had roughly 3 hours of sleep and mostly slept in the band room on the auditorium stage. If you have pictures of this event, Mr. Pirzer asks that you send some his way for the website and for our end-of -year slideshow.
SOLO & ENSEMBLES PLACEMENT:
Ted Turner & Levi Riley – excellent: Joe Burleson & Sara Jennings – superior : Stephen Prendes – Superior with distinction (this means he memorized his piece). The three superiors will play individual pieces at Spring Concert.
Concert with the Gainesville Community Band on March 28th had a nice turn out.
NEWS OF THINGS TO COME:
STATE CONCERT FESTIVAL NEXT WEDNESDAY, 4/28/10, at the University of Florida Memorial Auditorium (next to Century Tower). Both of our bands will perform, but at different scheduled times.
CONCERT BAND has an early performance at 8:00 a.m. Concert musicians need to be at GHS, dressed in concert attire at 6:30 a.m. for a 6:45 a.m departure. Warm up is at 7:15 a.m. PLEASE NOTE: Students are not cleared from class for the remainder of the day. Dr. Dixon expects concert band musicians to return to GHS and attend 3rd through 6th period. Mr. Pirzer notes that concert band has made great progress even since the last time you heard them.
SYMPHONIC BAND performance is at 2:30 p.m. Symphonic band musicians will attend 1st through 2nd period. The symphonic band will leave after Lunch A. PLEASE NOTE: If you want to take your symphonic musician home with you after the performance, please send a signed note in to Mr. Pirzer by Tuesday, 4/27/2010. You’ll still need to check out with Mr. Pirzer (at the bus loading area) before leaving with your musician. Otherwise, students will return to GHS via bus and help unload the equipment. Mr. Pirzer notes that symphonic students’ instruments are often spending the night in the band bins rather than going home for practice. He asks parents to encourage their musicians to practice, practice, practice for this event.
PARKING FOR THIS EVENT WILL BE LIMITED to the Reitz Union Parking Garage due to other scheduled university events. Parking fee is $5.00. Drivers might like to drop visitors off at the auditorium before going to the parking garage. It is about a 10 minutes walk from the garage, and it is uphill. Students cannot drive themselves to the event.
YOU CAN TAKE PICTURES: Video and pictures of the performance is allowed and encouraged, but no FLASH. Mr. Pirzer requests copies of pictures for our end-of-year slide show.
HOW IS THIS EVENT JUDGED: It is judged similar to how districts were judged: There is a panel of three judges in the balcony. The judges use a national criteria and compare these bands to other bands they’ve judged across the country. They tend to judge much harder than that experienced at districts.
SPRING CONCERT IS JUST AROUND THE CORNER on Friday, 4/30/2010, at 7:00 p.m., Friday. Concert band is performing at least three pieces. We will have solo performances from our Ensembles, and then hear our symphonic band. Mr. Pirzer estimates that the spring concert should run about an hour. Spring concert follows on the heels of State Festival to finish our musical performances prior to AP Exams, which start on 5/1/2010.
AUDITIONS: Drumline Auditions 4/28/2010 5:30-7:30 p.m. Symphonic Band: 5/10-5/13 3:00-5:00 p.m. Concert band doesn’t require auditions to join the band. Sorry folks, I think I missed something about Audition Exams. I’m sure your musicians could fill you in, though, if you asked them.
DAYTONA BEACH TRIP: Friday, 5/14/09 – 5/16/09 (Fri-Sun). After school on Friday, the kids pack up and go to Daytona and stay at a hotel. All the kids are signed up. Rooms are taken care of. Mr. Pirzer needs 1 more female and 1 more male chaperone for the trip. If you haven’t chaperoned a Daytona Beach trip, Mr. Pirzer says that it’s an easy trip. The students are really well behaved. Everything usually goes very smoothly. Parents usually get to sit and watch the kids have fun, and enjoy each others’ company at the beach. Please let him know if you can chaperone.
Band Award Night: Friday 5/28/2010. Please encourage your student to attend. Everyone receives something. Freshman get varsity letters, others get their annual year pins, and the voted awards are given out. These are the awards that the band students themselves vote on.
Graduation: GHS graduation is scheduled for 10:00 a.m. at the Oconnell Center, Saturday, 6/12/10. Undergrad musicians meet at GHS at 8:00 a.m. and bus or carpool to UF.
SUMMER BAND CAMP DATES: 6/1/14-6/17/2010 4:00 -9:00 p.m., and, 8/7, 8/9-8/13/2010 are the Summer Band Camps’ dates. These dates have not changed from the last posting.
OTHER DISCUSSION AND NEWS FROM MR. PIRZER:
MIDDLE SCHOOL STUDENT Lists: At last meeting, Mr. Pirzer gave out lists of middle school students for phone calls. If you have notes or comment sheets to turn in, please do so. In addition, if you didn’t reach everyone on your list, let him know.
LOTS OF INCOMING FRESHMEN: Great news: All the Cambridge applications have come in over the last month. GHS had over 150 commits to the Cambridge program this year, and over 40 of them are band students. So we have a big opportunity to recruit band students. So Mr. Pirzer needs parents to make contacts to Cambridge freshman parents. Let them know that Cambridge students can successfully handle both Marching Band and the Cambridge curriculum. If they’re doubtful, encourage them to attend the June band camp – even if it’s only the first day. If we can get them to band camp, the retention rate is phenomenal. Middle school band is so different from what we do in high school in the Marching band. If we get everyone on board, we could have as many as 45-50 freshmen in the band when we include the Cambridge band students and all the other GHS freshmen who are in band.
COLOR GUARD: Tell everyone you contact, young ladies and young gents alike, to consider performing in the color guard if they don’t play an instrument. Encourage those who are doubtful to come to our Summer Camp I before making a final decision. Color guard is so important to the overall placement of our Marching band. As we said in the meeting tonight, “ Why not give it a twirl?!”
END OF YEAR SLIDE SHOW: We need a volunteer with technical savvy to assist us in putting together our end-of-year slide show. It’s a bit time consuming, but not very difficult. Mr. Pirzer has projector and other equipment needed to make the show. Of course, one could also use their own home computer program, too. Any picture show downloaded on a disc with a little musical background will work.
NOTE: Mr. Pirzer has a boatload of marching band pictures, but not many pictures outside of marching band season. He requests that parents and booster supporters forward him their favorites. Send silly pictures, close up pictures, and indoor competition pictures and whatever you like. But do it fast, please, as our award ceremony is just a month away. (Can you believe it’s that time of year again and already?).
SEW MASTERS UNITE FOR NEXT YEAR’S MARCHING BAND PROGRAM: We may need our sewing talent to make magic carpets for next year’s show. Dimensions are roughly 30 x 24. Two color – one color on one side and another color on the back side. Possibly using velcro & elastic for easy use during the show. We could need as many as 80 magic carpets. This idea is still in the brainstorm stage and subject to change. RECOMMENDATION was made to finalize the idea and complete the sewing project over the summer as a group project.
Mr. Pirzer also talked about some of the purchases that he’s made with the school board money that was allotted to GHS this year. The band room now has a new video projector mounted in the ceiling, new drum major podium, an amplification system for the pit, lots of new instruments, and more.
Treasurer News:
Checking account: We are just shy of $15,000 in the account. Daytona beach is not paid for yet. Suzanne is not quite finished with the Daytona sheet. She is also still working on transferring excess fund balances over to the Daytona balance sheet. Anyone who had overages from other fundraisers and payments will have the overage applied to the Daytona beach trip. However, this applies to Daytona balances for students. Gatornational money came in very quickly. We did get money in for the baseball concession, but not a lot - $38.00. It was apparently a bad concession stand day – rainy, cold, first game of the season.
NOTE: Those with fair share balances can clear their accounts up to the very day of the trip and still go on the trip with the rest of the class.
FAIR SHARE is updated as of 3/31/2010. The March 31st date doesn’t include the Applebee’s fundraiser or spring concession stands, and it may not reflect all of your candy sales yet.
Our band trailer was fixed in the last month and should be good to go for another year or so.
Fundraiser News
SCRIPT: Script is running this week. Get your orders in before Friday. We’re ahead of last year in total script to date - $1,200 so far. Next Script submission dates are April May 12th and June 9th. Think about your summer vacation plans now. Script has great values on Marriott hotels. There was discussion on whether funds raised over the next three months should be designated toward general funds or toward targeted expenses for next year’s competitions.
APPLEBEE’S FUNDRAISER: Unfortunately, this fundraiser wasn’t a big success. Our ticket sales were essentially a wash against the $200 deposit. We presold 50 tickets. Of these, 47 were redeemed. There was no profit on that. $113 in tips will be distributed to the balances among the students who served. The car wash didn’t happen, either, as there were not enough students to staff the car wash to go.
BRAINSTORM SESSION: We are going to repeat the gift baskets at our Spring Concert. Our last gift baskets added $500.00 to the general fund. It was thought that we’d target a smaller assortment of baskets this time. A movie basket and a spa basket were two themes. Later, after the meeting, our fundraiser sent me an update expanding the baskets themes: Off to College, Coffee or Tea Break, Chocolate lovers, and Yardwork or gardening. If you’d like to send in items for any of these baskets, we’d be happy, happy, happy to receive your generous donations. Just send in your donations to Mr. Pirzer. In addition to the above, two booster supports are also working on a beach basket and a barbecue basket, but stated that no additional items were needed for either of these two baskets.
FUNDRAISING IN GENERAL. Our fundraisers talked about selecting and planning for next year’s fundraisers before Band Camp I, so that the fundraising events can be more successful. Mr. Pirzer agreed and asked the fundraisers to meet with him outside of the booster meeting to select specific activities and dates for next year. Mr. Pirzer asked for people who are interested in chairing/coordinating specific fundraiser events to let him and/or the fundraising chairs know now. Mr. Pirzer is working on next year’s calendar now, and hopes to distribute them at the May booster meeting. He hopes to have the fund raiser events on the calendar.
It was also discussed that the candle sales usually are really popular and generate a fair sum for the students. Laura hopes to include this in the parent package at the end of Band Camp II.
BOOSTER ELECTIONS: VOLUNTEER COORDINATOR: Bruce Jennings talked about his time as the VP and Volunteer coordinator. He still doesn’t know what he’s supposed to do as VP. It was decided that the VP IS the volunteer coordinator. The position needs someone who’s not afraid to call people up and ask them to help out. It needs someone who can follow through and is self-motivated. Bruce says that building a consistent team that he could tap into is the key to success. His work starts with getting volunteers for Band Camp I – you know, the waters, the snacks, the washrags. What kind of time commitment is this position? Some weeks he does nothing, and other weeks he’s a much busier, particularly during the Marching competition season. His biggest challenge was building his e-mail list. Nomination: Mike Grantham was nominated and agrees to accept the nomination. There were no other nominations for this position. The official “election” will be at next month’s booster meeting.
SECRETARY: Rebecca Hamilton (that’s me) discussed the secretary position. I've created an e-mail list and a BandNews blog. Creating those two achievements were the biggest challenge of this position. I’m happy to say that both can be assumed with a password change and a profile update. Both are easy to use. The time commitment runs about 4 hours in editing and posting the minutes and between 1 to 2 hours weekly in other e-mails. To this I'd add about three hours posting marching competition results after competitions
Mr. Pirzer mentioned that the secretary should be someone who checks e-mails daily for his last minute rush requests. This could have been a reference to my haphazard checking of e-mails. (Sorry about that Mr. Pirzer). NOMINATIONS: No one volunteered at first. Susan Weinstein volunteered to fill the silence in a rather small voice, but also hoped that someone else would step forward, as she is already committed to the Boosters fundraising position.
UNIFORM MOM: Adela Van Antwerp and Karen Kilgore were not at the booster meeting, but someone said (sorry, I forgot who) that they were given permission to volunteer/nominate Adela and Karen to co-chair as lead uniform coordinators.
Again, no actual voting occurred at Monday’s meeting. Elections will occur at the May booster meeting. IF YOU ARE WILLING TO STEP FORWARD, please send me an e-mail. WE REALLY NEED A SECRETARY.
We had some extra cookie dough for sale at our meeting for $15.00 a box. Everyone was stuffed with free pizza, had extra boxes at home in their OWN freezers, and couldn’t really wrap themselves around more cookies at the meeting. Remaining boxes will in an ice chest at spring concert and available for purchase.
That’s it folks! Hope you enjoyed the read.
