Minutes from Parent Teacher Club Meeting December 12th

PTC Meeting 12/12/24
Meeting Began: 6:04pm

After four years of being in the Parent Teacher Club (as President and Volunteer Coordinator), Jennipher has accepted a position with the school district, so she can no longer be a board member. She will still be an amazing asset to our school as a volunteer. We can’t thank you enough for all that you’ve done for our school. We really do appreciate you.
So, we are in need of a volunteer coordinator if anyone would like to fill the role. PTC members would love to help anyone interested in learning more about the role.

Principal Report:
Thank you so much Jennipher for all of your support. I was speaking with one of our parents last night, and was informed that her daughter does face painting and balloon arches. This could help with future events.
OBOB teams will be announced tomorrow (12/13/24)
Career Dress Up Day - 12/13/24
Soccer Team (GRASSP) - They won a sportsmanship award! They are starting up again in the spring.
Popcorn Wednesday is 12/18
No staying in for recess: We are taking a stance, that students will no longer be held from recess for not completing school work. Studies show that it is very important for our students to have a brain reset and get that physical activity. It really does help in so many areas. You may now see homework coming home that did not get finished in class.
Thanks to our PTC we have OBOB books in every classroom. They are also available through the public library. We can get more access on Chromebooks hopefully next year.
Progress reports will be going home Friday, 12/20 but they are available now on Parentvue
We have our winter break 12/23 - 1/3/25
Chess for success was split between two days. There Will be a practice tournament on 1/11/25 at 8:30 am
Lockdown Drill will take place in the first 10 days of the year, per the requirement. We act like it’s real during the fire drill, because we want students to
practice this. For the lockdown drill there is a script that the Principal reads and that can be shared with parents if they would like. Some students need to know ahead of time, and we do that for them

Budget:
Kaileigh filled in for Bill:
Bill has done a lot of work trying to update how we are tracking and understanding our budget. There are a lot of complications because we don’t have our own bank
account so we can’t see our balances in-time, we have to go through the district. So, the print out shows where we currently stand and what we have left. We are planning to come up with a proposed budget that includes what we can spend and what we have to spend. We want to make it easier to see what we have done in the past. We’ll put in a receipt when money is spent and it takes about 3 weeks to see the correct balance. We want to use more of the money raised to benefit students and we want more input from families on how the money should be spent. Do we want more money for events, purchasing things for the school, etc. Jog-a-thon
costs us about 4,000 dollars to run. If it’s not donated, we have a rough year. We would like to take the burden off of next year’s board members. We want full-time working parents to be able to be a member of the PTC, by organizing the positions and tasks. At the end of the year (barring any unforeseen events) we should have 3,000 dollars to work with. How do we want to spend this?
Linda Staples clarified that she is not the approver of spending money.
We would love to have all parent emails if they want to be included in school events and PTC communications.
PTC has a survey out for parents. Whichever class has the most responses will win a pizza party.
The Movie night was awesome. It was a community event so we didn’t make any money but concession stand sales helped alleviate some of the cost of the event. The bulk of our spending was on the movie licensing, but we can use that license for the year.

Teacher Spotlight: Mrs. Shaffner - 1st Grade
1st grade has been working on their writing. They are doing really well. It’s informational writing with transition words. After break, we’ll begin opinion writing. Mrs. Shaffner shared some really great writing samples. Word work, sounds, labeling, working with CH, teaching secret stories, how we use letters to make different sounds, like Ow and oy. It helps them remember it. Story example: The man was chopping the wood, but suddenly, he got a splinter. He went to the hospital. We did a lesson where they had to write the story, we did Spiderman vs. Spiderverse and Gingerbread man. They are learning tips and tricks and it’s really fun. They think it’s so awesome that they are learning 2nd grade stuff. The biggest struggle is time, but it is with Kindergarten too. I have support from other teachers. Mrs. Fairhurst and Mrs. Aimes are my go-tos. The Kindergarteners are suns and the 1st graders are moons. So I do have some suns that can do moon work and vice versa. There are a lot of
advantages to the blend. A lot of work and energy. It’s been a challenge but it’s been very fun too. 
Principal: It’s an honor to see you at work. It’s a fine dance and it just weaves the students.

We are sponsoring 23 families this year with Winco gift cards. We would love to do more next year, but we are happy to be able to do this. Winco has toys and food and it’s going to be a great thing to give to those families.

Our next big event is Chuck-e-cheese night on January 17th. It was a fun event last year. Our wonderful Mrs. Holmstrom got to go recently with our Jog-a-thon top earners. It has some really great games. There is parent enjoyment. A lot of parents just sat at a table, they have a door guard, and they could mingle with other parents. We raised $900. We get 20-30% back from sales. It’s a great thing to take your kid to. We will get 20% this year.

Bingo night is February 7th. We need a planning committee. We just need someone to write emails to orchestrate it. We have all of the info and we’ll meet with you to help plan. We would love to have a group take this over. We love to share knowledge with other families and we want to make it easy. A-Z party rentals give us 50% off and can deliver and pick up. We need to set up donations on Amazon. $5-20 prizes that parents can donate. Bingo night has a $2200 budget. A little bit of money for
everything.This is one of the biggest events for PTC Bucks for teachers. It’s a great way to give back to the school. We need a hand washing station this year. The health inspector showed up last year. We’ll be giving bingo bucks to families again this year. Last year we were giving them out to students instead of SOAR tickets as well. The church donates food we tucked them into the bags. We set up the line outside the door so that it moves along faster. We want parents to decide how they want to facilitate this event.

PTC: we’d like more engagement and conversations about what’s going on in our community. We plan to save 10-15 per meeting to open it up to conversations and feedback. This is time that we can brainstorm together. With our savings of $3000 for emergencies, if nothing happens, we would like to hear from our community about how that money should be spent. Aside from that, we want to encourage communication back and forth between parents. Our next meeting with include a chunk of time for that.

Our next meeting is scheduled for January 9th.
Meeting Adjourned 7:00pm