This week is a light one for the Odem Bands, with no events scheduled except a Cleveland Rehearsal from 6pm-8pm on Thursday. For students attending that trip it is imperative they are present at those rehearsals! Particularly for any student who is not in Wind Ensemble those are the only times they’re rehearsing that music with our group. We are only doing three songs from Wind Ensemble out of our seven for the concert, so it’s imperative that those students are all there. We understand if there is a conflicting game or other school contest that evening. With tournament days we do ask if students are back from those games that they come over to the band hall to rehearse as much as they are able. This week we do have a guest clinician coming in to work with the HS Wind Ensemble during class on Tuesday!

The big thing for this week though is we are starting an Odem Band fundraiser that we need HS and JH students both to participate in! This year we are trying something new, a spin on Discount Cards. This fundraiser involves selling digital discount cards, which means you don’t have worry about if you have the card or not. There are a number of businesses and restaurants who have signed onto the fundraiser locally, including; Rancho’s Catering & Drive-Thru, Blue Clove Seafood Bar and Grill, Cici’s Pizza, Chili’s (Calallen), Dave and Busters, Denny’s, Firestone Corpus Christi, Good-N-Crisp Chicken (Calallen), Land and Sea Restauran, Marco’s Pizza (Weber Road), Mesquite Street Pizza and Pasta Company, Mr. G’s Bar-B-Que, on the Border Corpus Christi, Outback Steakhouse, Papa Johns, Papa Murphy’s, Peter Piper Pizza, PF Changs, Popeye’s (Calallen), Smoothie King, Sonic, Water Street Central Kitchen, and Dallas Golf.com. Additionally, this fundraiser has a bonus component of then also granting the donor access to any other discount cards in other cities. Dallas has quite a few, Austin has a good number, and San Antonio also has a few if you have relatives in that area, they can purchase ours, and use the local ones – or if you travel you can take advantage of the other deals too! The discount cards are $20/card, and quite a few of the deals will pay for the card with just a couple uses! Cards last until next year on 2/26/2025. 

We need students to help us with selling them by completing the steps to join the fundraiser if they haven’t already. We started to do this in class, but ran out of time with apps downloading being slow. Instructions may be found here: https://launch.moneydolly.com/fundraiser/100998

By tomorrow we need students to have downloaded app, joined fundraiser (Join Code is 27MV-KUNA), uploaded a profile picture (this gets sent out, so it needs to be a good picture of them that’s not inappropriate!), and uploaded at least 10 contacts of potential adult supporters to the ‘My Circle’ area of the app. Parents should also download the app and be invited to be a ‘helper’ from within the student app link. That will let you all share the link to other family members and friends too! Tomorrow we will also ask that the links be shared from each student on social media.

We have our show for next year selected, ‘Legends of the Alamo,’ and are anticipating a need for props to be built and printed for the show. With that in mind we are hoping to raise between $4k-5k with this fundraiser! Please help us get the word out and support the students!

Finally, Spring Band fees should be turned in by this time for 7^th-12^th Grade students. Please turn those in as soon as possible! Fees are $25/Student payable via Check or Money Order. They help to offset many of the costs in the spring with clinicians, supplies, music, etc. Please make payment out to OEISD, Memo: Band. Please contact us if you have any questions!

This Week’s Schedule:

Day:	Event:
Monday:	Band Hall Closed
Tuesday:	Band Hall Closed
Wednesday:	Band Hall Closed
Thursday:	Band Hall Open 6:00pm-8:00pm Cleveland Rehearsal
Friday:	Band Hall Closed

Upcoming Events:

Day:	Event:	Time:
March 25th	Odem JH Pre-UIL Contest Concert	6:30pm
March 26th	Odem HS Pre-UIL Contest Concert	6:30pm
April 4th-5th	UIL Concert and Sight-Reading	TBA
April 26th	11th Annual South Coast Jazz Festival
May 4th	Windi and Jazzi Fundraiser
May 10th	American Classics Festival: Odem HS Wind Ensemble and Odem JH Symphonic Winds at Del Mar College	2pm/3pm
May 13th	Odem JH Symphonic Winds and HS Spring Concert
May 14th	Odem JH Beginning Band and Concert Band Spring Concert
May 24th	Graduation
May 26th-27th	UIL State Solo and Ensemble
June 3rd	Cleveland Send-Off Performance
June 4th-8th	Cleveland Trip

Thank you for your help and support of these amazing students! Please contact us if you have any questions!