President’s Report – 4/10 PTA Meeting

Thanks to all of those who joined us Monday, including Superintendent Jason Villoria. Our TOW PTA is celebrating 50 years and we received a Legacy Award from the CA state PTA. Our student council reps reported on the sock drive, earth links, garden tours at both lunches, and the recent Ocean Awareness Night which raised $2,740 for the Marine Mammal Shelter.

Joana Diver gave a wrap up on Jogathon, which was incredible this year. With the transition to the new online Scholastic Challenge website and cash in envelopes, we received over $80,000 in donations (update: as of Wednesday, it’s over $85,000!). This is a surprising new record for TOW, especially given our lower enrollment numbers, and we are excited to have money to spend! Final numbers will be shared out shortly. On that note, if you have ideas for ways you’d like to see us spend the money or programs you’d like funded, please reach out to Sarah at contact@towpta.org as soon as possible. We’re closing out this year’s budget and prepping for next year in the current weeks, and we will be allocating money before the end of this year.

Kelly Osborne reported that we are competing for a $25,000 grant from Seeds of Change. Don’t forget to cast your vote daily for ONE MORE WEEK at https://www.seedsofchangegrant.com/GalleryDetail.aspx?id=3612! With the help of the LBHS Solar Club, last week we installed solar panels on the garden shed and are designing an educational sign re: solar and related NGSS linked lessons.

Shaheen Sheik-Sadhal reported on the CA Farm to School Conference which she and Kelly attended in Modesto March 27-29. They developed some great communication with the district as a result and we are adding a PTA Wellness Chair position at each school in the district to help move nutrition related topics forward in our schools.

Sheri Morgan reported on the Book Swap completed last week: 4183 books swapped, many classes had 100% participation. We are donating 2000+ books back out to the community–let us know if you have a specific organization that would be a good recipient.

Mr. Conlon shared the revised handball court mural project artwork, which will be started soon. The $3,000 Pacific Life Grant will be used for the Weather Station, plus hopefully a School Power grant. He also described upcoming staffing for next year. Ms. Baghai will be taking a leave of absence next year, so one teacher will shift to 5th grade. Other teachers will be shifting around to accommodate different numbers of students across different grade levels. We will likely reduce to 4 classes in 1st and 2nd grade and will need at add a kindergarten classroom to account for all day kindergarten. Registration is now open for new students, so we will get a better idea of kindergarten numbers soon. Dr. Villoria reported on the status of the CLC program and shared that Board of Education has three rules for the program, which falls into the category of a “program of choice”: teachers have to volunteer, students have to volunteer, and the program has to have the same requirements, funding and support as all other classes. The district is currently reaching out to teachers to see if any would like to volunteer for the program.

Grace Jones did a short presentation on findings from the Early Developmental Index (EDI), which compares incoming 5 year olds performance in multiple domains to other students in the state and county. We learned that for incoming LBUSD 5 year olds, we score below average in three areas: social language, academic problem solving, and fine motor skills. An EDI task force of district and community partners (including local preschool directors) has been established to see how we can help our kids improve in these areas.There are 3 upcoming sessions designed to help support parents and bring together experts in the areas. Contact Grace Jones for more info.

A budget committee was appointed and Sarah Durand was appointed Parliamentarian for the 2017-2018 PTA executive board. Parent Grace Yee came to discuss a STEM family day that was at her previous school in Palo Alto and how we might be able to do something similar at TOW. We agreed that we would love to do something similar in June. We also discussed Heifer International’s Read to Feed program and some potential ideas for how it could work at TOW (teachers Mrs. Wolsey and Mr. Kull have been investigating).

Treasurer Laura Jumani presented the Treasurer’s and Budget to Actual Reports and we voted on budget adjustments to account for the higher price of Angels tickets and high Talent Show income.

We hope you will all join us for our next meeting on Monday, May 8 at 8am in the MPR.

Thanks,

Sarah Durand
TOW PTA President