PTA Board Meeting Minutes, December 11, 2007, 6:30 p.m., @ AES
Fall fundraiser—after discussion, Kathy Rutter motioned to “stay with Christoline next year but not to do home delivery”. Linda Lynch seconded the motion. The vote was unanimous on favor of the motion.
Entertainment Books—we have a few books in our possession to sell at 100% profit. We sold 104 to date with a profit of $1035. We have 23 Boston and 8-9 S. NH. That if we sell is pure profit.
Spring fundraiser—what’s the timeline?
Square One Art—so far we have $2,815. Pretty close to our target of $3000.
Lowell Devils—Do we want to do this? Tickets are $10; we can charge up to $14. Afternoon games available: 2/16, 2/24, 3/2, 3/16. All but the first date would include free family skating after the game. We opted for the 3/2 game if possible.
Other ideas for low-effort fundraising: Flatbreads, Sal’s, fund drive, what else? – Julie A will call Flatbreads and Maggie Sundae to try to reserve dates.
2) Budget report (Dee Cote) – see attached.
3) Teacher Appreciation Lunch (Ann Marie Holbrook, Tara Nelson)—There is a question about whether or not we want to give gifts to special staff such as speech therapists, etc. What should our policy be? After discussion, Dee Cote motioned “to give $25 gift certificates to each homeroom classroom and to each teacher of a special class (art, music, technology, gym, guidance, library) and $500 for each school. Gail Browne seconded the motion. The vote was unanimous in favor of the motion. Walmart gift cards will be purchased.
4) Are You Smarter Than a 4th Grade Math Student? (Julie Amery)—I made the executive decision to agree to sponsor this event that is being planned by our math teachers. We are helping them to advertise it; they are doing all the planning. Can we give them some money for small, token gifts to participants? How much? We decided they can spend up to $75 from the parent education budget item.
5) Vacation Events (Lisa Cassidy)
· Swimming at YMCA in Haverhill on Friday, Dec. 28th
· Coco Key in Danvers on Monday, February 18th, 2008.
6) After-School Enrichment (Cindy Russell) - Letters go out asking for instructors on Wedneday, 12/12 due back by 12/18. Jan 2nd class offerings go out in poly. Sign up on Jan 9th. Classes start week of Jan 14th and run through Feb 11th.
7) Science Fair (Julie O’Neill)—see attached written report
8) Website (Gail Browne)—we need to decide if we should keep old events posted so that people can see what the PTA does.
9) Membership (Sharon McAfee) – Total members stands at 284.
10) Next meeting – Tentatively Wednesday, January 16th, 2008 @CES library.
Cindy Russell motioned to adjourn meeting, Dee Cote seconded the motion. The vote was unanimous to adjourn the meeting. Meeting was adjourned at 8:03pm.
Science Fair Update (Julie O’Neill)
We held a committee meeting on Nov 28th and here are the outcomes -
The science fair date of April 5th is confirmed with the middle school, and I am waiting on the facilities guy to get back to me with a firm fee for the custodians - we will most probably need two.
The science fair presentations will be in the cafe of AMS (same as last year), but we will be having the addition of some drop-in activities taking place in the gym so families can check those out before/after their student does his/her presentation. These activities will be facilitated by parent volunteers and some ideas include - building rube goldberg machines with recycled materials, building news tube structures, Come Meet the Way-Cool Scientist, dry ice bubbles, and a photo booth with science props (also a fundraiser). We welcome any other ideas as we firm up this list and start building a stock of supplies.
The Star Party is now officially on Sunday night April 6th, the date is confirmed with Cashman and the NSAAC. I am waiting on my contact at NSAAC to recommend a start time to make sure it is dark enough, but for now we are thinking 6:30 to 8:30pm.
We are working on streamlining the steps of the scientific method to encourage students to choose this mode for their projects, but there will still be a demonstration category. Students can also choose to do a rube goldberg demonstration as part of the last category.
A parent informational meeting will take place at the end of January, with handouts going out in early February and the proposals due after February vacation. We will also be including a calendar/timeline to help students stay organized.
One thing we are hoping to do this year is to use the science fair to support teachers in their science instruction. Using a grade level science scope & sequence from the MA Frameworks, the idea was proposed to have all of the classes compete in one topic - for example, all of the 3rd grade classes in both schools work on simple machines - and the best overall board will be voted on by participants at the science fair. We are also looking to line up parent and high school volunteers to help out individual classroom teachers on these projects. We will bounce this idea off of the building principals before exploring it further.
Another idea was proposed to have a science fair afterschool enrichment class to help kids work on their projects. We would need to see if this is feasable with Cindy and Janet, and if it is, we need to find someone willing to teach this class. – We discussed and its not feasible with classes timeline.
We are still looking for the Science Celebration entertainment for the show portion of the day, and we are looking for feedback before booking either Jeff Danger or someone else.
We are also brainstorming a list of potential science fair judges. We are building on the list from last year, and will start contacting them in January to see who would like to participate.
We are also brainstorming ideas for door prizes and possible award prizes (in addition to or in place of ribbons). In the past, there have been gift certificates and passes to MOS, Children's Museum of Portsmouth, and local toy and book stores.
We also have about 45 white boards for students and 24 teacher whiteboards left over from last year
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