Minutes from PTO meeting on September 26, 2017.
In attendence were Mr. Sylvia, Dr. Bloom, Mrs. Kiley, Mrs. Corwin, President Kenda Coulter, VP Sarah Wood, Treasurer Anthony Greenwood, citywide representative Dave Blaton, and assembled parents.
Guest speaker: Mayor Thomas Koch & Chief of Staff Laura McBirney.
Mayor Koch discussed building of new Sterling Middle School is underway and will be revisiting the building of a new Squantum School. St.Mary’s school was bought by the city and will be a new elementary school for residents of the other side of the expressway who currently attend Montclair. Mayor took various questions from parents. Said he will speak to superintendent regarding earlier introduction of foreign language which was brought up by Dave Blaton since he discussed this at a citywide meeting. Parents also asked about speaking to kids at younger age about bullying and social media. Mr. Sylvia said we do have an anti-bullying campaign who visits parent nights and to speak to kids. The mayor also stated that parents are always welcome to ask questions and express concerns during open forum at school committee meetings.
Mr. Sylvia: Very successful Kindergarten orientation and lots of K parents at this PTO meeting. Thanks to Sarah Wood and other volunteers for popsicle social. Update on last year: amazing Disney raffle fundraiser which will allow us to buy 10 more chrome books for the school in addition to the mobile cart of chrome books that was donated by the city. Google classroom has been introduced in grades 3-5 and hopefully will be added to younger grades later this year. Maybe run a parent academy on chrome books. Grades 4-5 will take MCAS on the chrome books this year. Aspen family portal will be introduced in October. Logins will be sent out and parents can view assignments, grades, and if assignments were missed in addition to the attendance, report cards, etc. Boosterthon fun run pep rally will be Oct 5. Kids will receive crowns and it will be tied in with our PBIS program as the theme is Castle Quest and is about being brave and strong. The fun run is during school on Oct 17. There will be incentives and prizes. The funds will be used to help with technology. Oct 5 is picture day. Hayward photography now allowing online payment. Julie Hart will be organizing picture day volunteers…about 5-6 volunteers needed.
Boks before school fitness program will be starting and led by Mr. Miller. Outdoor classroom looks great. New band teacher this year is Joe Salvucci. Upper grades had an instrument demo last week. Grades 2-5 will have a strings demo on Friday 9/29 by Ms. Lai.
MCAS 2.0 scores from last year won’t be out until late Oct or early Nov.
School is off to a great start and traffic pattern/parking have not been a problem so far.
Box Tops will be collected the first Friday of each month. Hoping we can advertise a specific item that we’d like to put the box top money toward. Each box top donates 10 cents to our school. We bring in about $1000 a year from box tops.
11/7 bake sale during city election. Baked goods and volunteers will be needed all day.
Restaurant fundraisers:
Panera: 10/26
Unos: 11/15
Monster Mash dance is 10/13.
Also discussed Polar Express for December and a possible fall movie night.
Reading counts and Docent Art volunteers are needed.
Dave: School committee candidate Mark Sauter spoke at last citywide meeting regarding language immersion. There was also discussion of QPS website improvement. 10/16 debate at Central Middle School.
Anthony: introduces idea to have Heather Morkan assist in financial duties so there are two sets of eyes on the accounts, auditing of the treasurer’s work, and a sense of accountability due to things that have happened at another school. At least two people should be counting money after all events and signing off on it. Then money will be given to Anthony to be deposited.