President’s Report – 5/8 PTA Meeting

Posted May 11, 2017

Thanks to all of those who joined us Monday–we had a great turnout of very engaged participants who stuck through a long meeting! We kicked off with our student council reps reporting on Kindness Week and Earth Day Garden Tours. They will be helping with the end-of-year celebrations including 10,000 link party.

Librarian Nikki Romano talked about the Book Fair, which usually earns approximately $2,000-3,000 for the library. She suggested forming a PTA Book Fair committee to help support next year’s fair, with suggested dates of Dec 4-8. PTA subsequently voted to allocate $2500 to the library for purchase of new books this year.

Mr. Conlon and Amy Kernan shared the results of the LCAP survey (local control accountability plan), which included input from parents and students 5-12th grade. We reviewed the data and discussed, most areas were very strong, including the school climate of respect and supportiveness. Barriers include the rate of participation in the survey; rate is 15% district wide, and 97 parents responded at TOW. Parents expressed concern that their views of school climate vary by school, but the survey asks for responses for the oldest child. They also expressed keeping up with the educational acronyms is challenging and not everyone understands what the LCAP means.

Shannon Huhn gave an overview of CLC tenets of community service, environment and peace. Inquiry based learning, project based learning and global perspective are incorporated in looped 1-2 and 3-4 classrooms. The program is an “alternative program of choice” within the educational code and includes many field trips and high parent involvement. Students will now get into the program based on lottery system and applications are open now.

Wendy Joy was thanked for her coordination of Staff Appreciation Week and she shared what a fulfilling experience it was. Caroldean Ross volunteered to work with her next year as co-chair. Centralized signup.com made things run smoothly. Kids Run the OC happened over the weekend and four TOW students placed out of 13,000: Jordyn Flynn, Mason McKinzie, Sarah Dunning, Shelby Dunning.

Kelly Osborne shared an overview of the 5 lessons taught in the garden this year. She shared that we won a milkweed grant from Univ. of Kansas (32 plugs of narrow leaf milkweed) and hosted two farmer’s markets in April. Breaking news was that we won $10,000 from Seeds of Change!

Wrapping up the Jogathon, Sarah Durand reported that the financials are in: we received $21,050 corporate sponsor donations, $56,431 in online donations, $11,602 in envelope donations for a total of $88,000+ in revenue and another $15,000 in in-kind. New chairs Tiffani Frey and Meredith M are on board for next year!

Shaheen Sadhal reported positive meetings of parent groups for the newly formed Wellness committee. She took a tour of school kitchens, is working on forming descriptions of the wellness chair position and is hoping to get out a parent survey this year.

We reviewed the financials and adjusted the budget to reflect actual income/spending during the current year and we also approved spending for the following items:

$500 budget for counsellor Mrs. Hamilton (for this year and next)
$2500 total for library spending in current year
$7,000 additional funding for the TOW PTA scholarship – 1-time funding to support 2018 to 2024 LBHS graduates (from TOW); next year’s $1,000 scholarship will benefit that year’s 5th grade class of 2025
$4,024 increase for the Garden budget for conference costs and possible observational bee hive
$300 additional budget for preschool for new books and seating

Incoming Vice President Crystal Jerabek reported on the high level changes to next year’s budget including funding three Family Nights (STEAM, Arts, Garden), increasing the budget for Community Service to potentially help out a sister school and have a PTA match for Rocket Ready projects, 50th Anniversary Surprise Shirts provided to all TOW students and staff, and a budget for Wellness so we can bring back Harvest of the Month and Laguna Chefs.

Bylaw revisions were restated, including:

Increasing annual membership dues from $10 to $15
Eliminating the Corresponding Secretary position
Removing Historian and adding Financial Secretary as the Authorized signer on all checks

We hope you will all join us for our final PTA meeting of the year on Monday, June 12 at 8am in the MPR.

Thanks,

Sarah Durand
TOW PTA President

Sarah Durand