TPES PTA Meeting Minutes: February 2019

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Takoma Park Elementary School (TPES)

PTA Meeting

Tuesday, February 5, 2019. 6.45-8pm

 

7pm: Welcome: Upcoming Events and Announcements, Lia Salza Goldstein)

Lia previewed the following upcoming events for everyone’s calendars.

Friday Feb 1 – Friday Feb 8: Scholastic Book Fair

Monday Feb 18: Presidents Day – no school

Tuesday March 5: PTA Meeting, Healthy Kids

Tuesday April 2: PTA Meeting, PEP: Understanding Friendship and Bullying

 

7.05pm: TPES PTA Treasurer’s Report, Erin Kelley (Treasurer)

No significant highlights for this month but Erin noted:

  • Dolphin Drive income was higher than forecast – thanks to all who donated
  • We’ve had 236 members join the PTA this year which is lower than expected – there is still time to join!
  • After-school club scholarships were all covered for the Winter period but it looks likely we will need more for the Spring session.
  • We are still waiting for reimbursement of the $10,000 grant for STEM – Erin is chasing this and expects it shortly. Thanks again to Tracey Mathias for her work!

 

TPES/PBES Basketball Game, Mark Ivcevich (Basketball Game, Chair)

This year’s game will be on Thursday May 16 from 6 – 8pm and will be held at Takoma Academy (8120 Carroll Ave).

There are lots of opportunities to volunteer, get involved and sign-up to play. Please keep an eye out on the PTA listserv and look out for information coming home in dolphin folders.

Readathon Update, Sara Lewis (Readathon Co-Chair)

This will be our 6th year of the readathon. Not only does it get our kids inspired and excited to read, it is our biggest fundraiser of the year with $17,000 raised last year. We hope to raise a similar amount this year but we encourage all children to participate even if they aren’t collecting sponsorships.

The readathon runs March 4–29 with special events including a kick-off assembly.

We are still looking for volunteers in 3 main areas:

  • Work that can be done at home – includes creating achievement certificates, creating leaves / trees with kids names on them and inooutting minutes read into a database
  • Friday mornings at school – tallying up minutes from the children’s readathon sheets
  • Friday afternoons at school – handing out prizes to all our readers.

Clubs and Enrichment, Shana Sabbath (Equity Committee Chair)

Following a successful campaign to get the word out about our scholarship program, we now have a big need for more. The PTA provides a number of scholarships and the vendor provides one scholarship per filled club too, but we usually have more need than that. In the past the PTA has been able to meet all requests but having expanded our outreach this year, demand is up so we need to find more funding.

Additional donations would be very welcome. You will also be able to add a scholarship donation when you sign your child up for a club, please consider doing so if you are able.

 

A to Z Connect School Directory, Tim Gronniger (Parent Volunteer)

In response to many parents requests for a school directory Tim has been working on creating a TPES Directory in the A to Z Connect app. The app contains 520 TPES student records. If you asked not to be included in the school directory then your information will not be there. You can download the app from the iOSapp store or Google Play (search for ‘AtoZ Connect’, when you first log in you will be asked to validate your information. Once you’ve done that you will be able to look up contact information for children in your child’s class(es). Tim would welcome any feedback. Lia passed on the PTA’s thanks to Tim for picking up such a big and important piece of work.

 

Volunteer Update: Exec Team 2019-2020, Sarah Corcoran (Volunteer Coordinator)

Lucy briefed the meeting on Safe Routes to School, TKPK5k and special projects.

We are committed to making Takoma Park a walkable and bike-able city. Recent / upcoming initiatives include:

  • A pop-up bike lane on Maple Ave later this year
  • The old wooden stairs behind TPES down to the community center have been removed and will be replaced by trees/shrubs

 

7.30pm: Literacy Presentation, Ms Ard-Gales (TPES Assistant Principal)

Ms Ard-Gales delivered a comprehensive presentation covering literacy and an overview of the reading program at TPES, before answering questions from PTA meeting attendees. A copy of the presentation is attached.