Lakeside band director inspires support
Seventeen years after being a band director of Lakeside High School, Karl Mote took over the position for the middle school three years ago.
Distraught over the condition of the band equipment (47 pieces of them on loan from various individuals, a lot of them from Mote himself) and unable to have adequate funding to purchase anything new during the fall concert for the parents and Suncrest community, Mote laid out an empty drum in front of the audience and pleaded for help.
That night he raised $100, the beginning of what was to become Roll Call, an immensely popular and successful fundraising program partnered with the community.
In the audience that night, Holly Holbert and her husband, along with Mary Hutchens, answered Mote’s call for action. Together with their counterparts from Lakeside High School, they hatched a plan. They would mobilize band members and their parents to pick up green yard waste for any household in Nine Mile Falls School District in exchange for a donation to the marching bands of both schools.
Fliers went out all over the community along with messages in the school newsletters. Mike Whiteside of the Lakeside High School Boosters parents’ group immediately got involved. Calls went out to the community. About 100 students and 80 parents participated in four weekends of yard cleanup campaign in 2006 and raised $6,000 over those few, sweaty back-breaking days.
The organizers were stunned, not only by the money raised, but also by the response of the community. “People love the fact they know where the money they give goes to. There is accountability in that.” Mote said. “We are raising funds to purchase band instruments and to pay for our trips,” he added. “Every penny we raise we save, until we have enough to buy new equipment.”
High school band director Dan Nord estimates it takes about $110,000 to get the high school band to the standard he would like to teach. And that includes uniforms, trips and instruments. for the middle school band.
Word got around. This year, the demand outgrew the manpower (and the truck power) of the group. They were unable to finish the work order. Workdays are scarce. In order to properly dispose the yard waste, the group coordinates with Tum Tum Fire Station to have the chipper available at the fire station, where all loads are chipped. On those three weekends that the chipper was available this year, the group raised $5,000.
It is a win-win for everybody – the fire station, the band, the community. But perhaps, the biggest winner of all is the students themselves.
“Over and over people have expressed how happy they are to see how hard the children work for this money. They have had first hand experience learning how money is made.” Mote said. “And this is a lesson no class or money can teach.”