Meeting Notes from November 11-15-2010 English

Post date: Jan 9, 2011 9:09:06 PM

RDLS PTSO Meeting Notes

November 15, 2010

SHIP (Statewide Health Improvement Program) Presentation

§ Presented by Jessica Smith & Robyn Wiesman

§ Collaborating with communities regarding health issues such as obesity, tobacco, “Safe Routes to School.”

§ Is there a group of parents interested in working with them to address some of the issues that keep parents from having their kids walk or bike to school? Discussed some of the reasons why kids do not walk to school (traffic, lack of sidewalks, etc).

Old Business - Recap

§ Book Fair – Almost $4000 in books sold, increase of $700 from last year

Ø $2500 in Scholastic books earned for the school

Ø $200 in One For Books donations

§ School Directory – Jen Spickelmier

Ø Can the font be smaller, to save money next year?

Ø What about soliciting advertisements to help pay for it?

§ Food for Teachers at Conferences went well and the teachers were very appreciative, especially for the warm soups/chilis and the vegan option

§ Culver’s – made $442 dollars

Ø Don would like to do a demonstration of donating the money

Ø We could make more with the pint sale if it were better advertised

Ø We could do the fundraiser one more time in the spring

§ Dino’s Gyros would be interested in doing a fundraiser with us

Treasurer’s Report

§ $8200 in Checking and Savings combined

§ So far expenses match income.

§ Only expense so far is directories and childcare for PTSO meetings.

§ Income: Culver’s and $300 from Spirit wear

Superintendant’s Parent Advisory Council – Megan Ritchie

§ Next meeting is Thursday 11/17 at 7 PM

§ Megan asked about money for playground improvements (for older kids) and a new sign. Currently no money in the district budget for those things.

§ District will be putting out random surveys in the community to see if people will vote for a referendum next year.

§ Would like to get more families involved in the advisory council, and a more diverse group of parents involved in the school.

Community Outreach Meeting

§ Next meeting Dec 7 at 6:30 PM

§ Discussed doing a service project this year (Toys For Tots, or VEAP)

§ Art/Music for senior housing or community buildings

§ Website Discussion

Ø Jeremy Kidd and Nathaniel Lindley working on it from the tech standpoint

Ø Will need volunteers to keep up the site content once it is created with relevant, up-to-date information. Very important to have some bilingual content owners.

Ø Would like to use it for community outreach, volunteer sign-up, notes from meetings, email broadcasts, etc.

Ø Will have links to and from the RDLS school website

Ø Sections will be like “blogs” and the owner of each section can post updates, parents can ‘subscribe’ to certain sections to get emails when updates are added

Ø What should the address be?

Ø We need to pay a fee to register domain names (might be worth getting a few of them, so that if people mistype, etc, they can still get to the same site).

Ø For domain name, one year is $10, for five years out it would be ~$25

Ø Thinking of having home page in both languages side-by-side, and having everything else separately in both English and Spanish.

CityKid Java – Lisa Hintermeister

§ All things that come out from PTSO or community groups (for external companies) in kids’ folders need to be bilingual and approved by the district.

§ Contact at the district: Patricia Vaughan (Patricia.Vaughan@richfield.k12.mn.us)

§ Profit is smaller per item this year (last year $2-$4, this year $2-$2.50 per item)

§ Reminder will go out to families this week and orders need to be turned in by Dec 5^th­­­

§ Week prior to Christmas break need to gather people to gather and package up the orders.

Purchase request – dollies for bass xylophones

§ Store-bought stands for bass xylophones are $119 each (need 5, so $600 total)

§ Would be nice to have someone who could make them for the cost of wood and materials.

§ PTSO approved the money required to buy wood and materials to make the dollies. PTSO will address costs again if no one is available to make the dollies.

§ A few parents are looking into the possibility of building ourselves.

School Sign

§ Talked to some companies, none of them local.

§ Approximate costs: $5900 wall mount LED, $3700 for free-standing non-LED (traditional, replacing letters). $600 of those costs would be shipping, so it might be a good idea to find a local company.

§ We will not make a decision now, but it is probably not something that the district would ever pay for, so maybe we want to make it a priority at some point.

§ Possibly have specific fundraisers for it and build up over a few years?

§ Kelly Johnson contacted RBCU to see if they would be willing to donate money to go towards the school sign. They need more information before they can commit to donating. If they do donate money for the sign, they would want some recognition.

Playground Addition

§ Luis has submitted request to district for a blacktop area and increased capacity with climbing walls, etc., especially for older kids as the school grows.

Grants

We just got 3 grants for the school that teachers wrote.