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The Wagner Rotary Club met on Wednesday, April 10th with a full house. President Becky Brunsing startled members with a loud ring of the Rotary Bell. The only guest present was Josh Davies who was there for the program. Pastor/Rotarian Bill Heermann gave thanks for the food, the day and asked for guidance from the Holy Spirit to aid all Rotarians as they go about in our Wagner Community.

Song leader Gerrit Juffer announced a surprise for the club. He contacted Austin Gengzliger at the Wagner School who was able to put some of our Rotary music on Gerrit’s iPad. It is so nice to have music to guide us in our singing. We did a respectable job on “It’s a Grand Old Flag.”

Rotarian Ken Cotton talked about an interesting Rotary program of fellowship called the Rotary Friendship Exchange. This activity is intended to encourage Rotarians and spouses to visit with Rotarian families in other parts of the world. It may be conducted on a club to club or district to district basis. The idea is for several Rotarian couples to travel to another country on the program. Later the hospitality is reversed when the visit is exchanged. After a successful pilot experiment, the exchange became a permanent program in Rotary.

The Friendship Exchange is comparable to the Group Study Exchange program except that it involves couples who personally pay for all expenses of their intercountry experience. Doors of friendship are opened in a way which could not be duplicated except in Rotary.

Sergeant at Arms Jamie Soukup levied the following fines: $2 to Bill Heermann for the glare he gave the corner table when he saw that his spot was taken; $1 each to the Rotarians sitting at that table (Scott, Jeff, Jordan, Jerry W. and Bill Frei and $2 to Patty Frei for sitting with them and breaking up their “man” club; $5 to Jeff Doom for his ability to start fires; $2 to Bill Frei for talking over Ken Cotton and picking on the Sergeant; $2 to Gerrit for the exciting news about our music. Happy Fines of $10 came from Craig Krsnak who has become a great-grandfather and $5 from Jeff Doom to be credited to Ken Cotton for his wife Mary bribing Jeff to blade down all the holes in the Cotton driveway.

Excitement was high as Scott McAdaragh had a chance at winning the Queen of Hearts drawing, but he only found a three of Hearts. Secretary/Treasurer Craig Krsnak announced that the drawing is up to $549.00 The attendance race is just getting started and the Juffer Team is down with three misses and the Frei Team has two misses.

President Brunsing made a couple of Rotary announcements about our District Raffle tickets having another two weeks to be turned in; and gave information about Renee Sorensen, the District RYL chairperson giving a talk to the Wagner Community students about going to the Youth Leadership camp this summer.

It was officially announced that Nick Dion of Wagner SD is going to be going on a trip to Australia with four other participants selected in District #5610 on the Rotary Cultural Exchange.

Club members discussed having another cleanup project going north of Wagner. It was decided that those able would meet next week on the 18th at the north edge of Wagner and pick up the ditches and fields for a mile. 5:00 PM to 7:00 PM Josh Davies was introduced to the group by Rotarian Bill Frei as his program for the day. Davies is the Dean of Students as well as Head Boys Basketball and Athletic Director at WCS. He gave information on a new program that as yet has not been officially named but could possibly be called the “W” Club. He outlined the details of the program which he has already presented to the Wagner Chamber of Commerce, and he is also in the process of contacting business owners in the community.

It is well known that the WCS has many athletic and academic clubs that students belong to; and there are also “Booster Clubs” especially for athletics. It had come to the attention of the school personnel, especially the coaches, that the community feels like they are bombarded with too many fundraisers for the different organizations. There are limits to what the School Board can spend when it comes to budgeting dollars for extracurricular activities in case you are wondering why the school cannot fund all these clubs.

Davies has been contacting the booster clubs and other groups and asking them exactly what they need in dollars each year to support their clubs. Their hope is to alleviate the community and the athletic organizations from the burden of fundraising and contacting so many businesses and individuals in the community year after year. They are setting limits for each club and will use a one-time donation from businesses to be divided up among the various sixteen organizations.

He outlined how the donations would be utilized. 1. Your donation will go 100% to the students .2. Your donation is once per year and will make for easy record keeping.

3. The coaches and student athletes can dedicate their time to the activity and not spend time fundraising.

4. Your contribution can go toward several school programs, not just those that have had fundraisers.

5. They will spend the money collected locally to help support the Wagner businesses.

The total to be raised for a year would come to $34,900. That comes to $2,100 per booster club. No one else should come to any business or individual to ask for a money donation to support school activities. All fundraising requests would be approved by the WCS board. The money would be supervised by Davies and another person from each organization.

If you have questions or suggestions for this plan, please contact Mr. Davies at the school. The Rotary members gave him a round of applause in appreciation of what he is planning.