Jefferson School PTA

PTA Board Meeting

October 11, 2012

Attendees:14

Hours Recorded: 89

1)     Principal’s Report (reported by Beth Trevor)

• All is well at Jefferson
• Working with Rita Geary to create a database of the parent/guardian interest form. Hope to use it to promote volunteerism. Immediate needs are volunteers for lunch and lunch recess times
• We need a safe schools liaison (walk and Roll days). Need a new guardian. Need also someone to participate in a walk audit. Kitty Keenan notes that she has spoken with someone about safe schools. Waiting on a document from Maggie (contract and a form). Kitty will reach out to Maggie. Looking for another person to manage the Walk and Roll School days. Create walking school busses to neighborhoods, do the daily events.
• All school programs are up and running. JAZ enrollment is at all time high. ALP is starting. Pre-teach concepts to kids in the ALP. Small group of kids, 10 or less. Teachers hand-pick the kids. They address bussing and so on. Different sessions per year. Make it games and fun stuff around a concept.
• School wide goal for Maggie is community building. Black Families group sponsoring spaghetti dinner with art, music and dancing, on December 7^th. Sell kids artwork to support Black Families Group to support the event and activities. Open to all.
• Parent/guardian-teacher conferences are starting soon. Report cards come during conferences. Sign up for conferences.
• Need sand for the sand box and 15 x 20 foot tarp to covert the sandbox. Grant committee to reach out to American Soil products to see if they would cover the materials costs.

2)     Treasurer’s Report

• Goal is transparency around the money. Have treasurer’s report at each meeting.
• Summary, waiting for funds from the walkathon to be the first start of the year.

3)     PTA Board Halloween—Meeting about the plan for Halloween volunteering, 4:30 on Friday. Checking with Jamaica and Tamika who might be ready to be involved, especially to get involved with a possible haunted house managed by the 5^th grade.

4)     Volunteer Coordinator/Volunteer engagement.

• How to engage volunteers
  • Open discussion of volunteer opportunities, how to engage and encourage volunteering.
  • Open for more email discussion
  • May be cultural but some places school involvement is not expected (not the norm)
  • New parents may have a tough time getting knowledgeable
  • Send out an addendum with the school calendar that shows when PTA meetings are and other Jefferson events plus; include when we are asking for volunteers and donations.
  • Some people who might volunteer for stuff, not events, and might get involved differently—something they can do at home.
  • We may be able to use bright arrow to send out requests
  • Volunteer Recognition
    • Searching for ways to recognize volunteers that are sensitive, open, supportive, and respect how people want recognition.
    • Idea: Rocks Certificates like the kids for but for the volunteers.
      • Need to manage logistics of how to send out, who would manage it
      • Give a raffle for volunteers who volunteer at least x number of hours, get in a raffle
      • Get the information to teachers, make it different

5)     Giving Campaign—approached a new person to be the overall organizer.

• Need a person to manage.
• 3 times per year. Pre-Christmas, can be a few matching opportunities.
• Goal to get even low dollar donations %participation
• As federal and state funds have dried up, we have gotten more aggressive about fundraising and follow giving campaign

6)     Parent Education Events

• Struggled to figure out what topics to present on and what presenters to use for those topics. What makes sense is to do what is coordinated with what the school/district is motivated to address.  So idea came up to focus on a parent workshop on bullying in the fall (December).
• Other idea—conquering homework
• Consider a survey poll to rank topics and also suggest other options
• See if welcoming schools has parent workshop
• Looking at combining the spring event with the Black Families group to facilitate workshops on cultural competencies

7)     Open discussion topics

Meeting Adjourned at 8:05pm.