- Liberty Elementary School
- Meeting Minutes
September 2018 PTA General Meeting Minutes
Liberty PTA – General Meeting Minutes
Tuesday, September 4th, 2018 – 3:00PM
- Call to Order at 3:00 PM
- Welcome parents/teachers and introduce officers.
Jen – Everyone being here means a lot to this school. We need you! Introducing PTA Exec (everyone present). Coming late: Smitha, William, and Tez.
- Principal’s Comments – Paul Pack
Introduce Alex, Stephanie, and Becky. Welcome to the school and PTA. Please always bring your concerns to us. Thank the PTA for all the work on the start of the year. We are in just the first two weeks but between PTA coordinating things like first day packets, teacher luncheons memberships, giveaways, we appreciate it – plus all the school kits. Thank you!
- President’s Report – Jen Robinette
- Call for Volunteers – Look at the Committee Reports. There are a lot of vacant spots. WE want some help. After School Enrichment: Exec board is working on it for now but we want someone to join us – if not take it on for yourselves. AEW – November. This focuses on the teachers and the work that goes along with it isn’t more than sending out flyers/making sure sign-up sheets are filled out. Please keep this in mind as we go into the yaer. When we don’t ave these things filled, either the board takes it on or it gets dropped. There is only so much we can all take on. You’re not alone when you take this on. You can co-chair. The nore hands we have, the lighter work.
- Membership – We moved to online membership last year. We suffered a great hit only offering online so we brought back paper membership. Moving forward into the years, it’s less likely we will be offering paper membership. I want to emphasize that when you create your PTA account online, it will follow you. For example, I have 3 kids at 3 schools. I could log online and join all 3 PTAs with one click. Membership right now is higher than total last year but still not where we want to be. Goal is 1,000 memberships, which is 1 membership per student. Grandparents, aunts, uncles – anyone can be a member.
- Treasurer’s Report – Lisa Geurin
- Adopt Audit Report – Earler, in August, a committee of 3 of us met and reviewed items from the previous fiscal year (through July 31). We reviewed the books and filled out a report for it. Paul motion to adopt; Poonam seconded the motion. All yeas, none opposed. Audit is adopted.
- Vote on 2017-2018 Proposed Liberty PTA Budget – The budget circulated to parents. Jodi Pelak motion to adopt; Turner Donaldson seconded. All yeas, none opposed.
- VP Events – Smitha Tumuluri. Smitha is called into a meeting so Jen is covering this portion. Upcoming Events – Laps for Liberty (9/20) – A schoolwide event, fun run for the kids. This is meant to bring in money via pledges for our school. The success of this greatly determines the rest of the budget. Kickoff is next week. Kids will get Laps for Liberty shirts paid for by the PTA. It takes 150+ volunteers to make this event happen. Paul – Origin of Laps for Liberty: Explanation is that we have a fundraiser that is a total joint partnership between the staff and the rest of the PTA (parents). All money raised to the penny goes back into the school. Because staff runs everything on the inside and PTA runs everything else, 100% goes back into the school. If you do homework on other fundraisers around the nation, this is very unique. If you look at things around the school like iPads and Chromebooks, a lot of this money came from Laps for Liberty.
- Children’s Diversity Night (10/18) – No report
- American Education Week (11/12-11/16) – No report
- Student Dance (11/16) – No report
- VP Committees/Volunteer Coordinator Report – Poonam Upadhyaya. “Volunteer of the Month” – a new certificate program. An award who puts in a lot of volunteer hours or inspires someone to be a role model to others. People can give money but giving time is very important. We cannot run any program without volunteers; it’s everything. We can print money but we can’t print time. PTA is not a billionaire and we do need to raise funds. We need help with getting 95-100 volunteers this day for Laps for Liberty.
- Fundraising – William Perry. We have sponsors for Laps for Liberty. Working with other sponsors for the other “Big Eagle” event. If you have small businesses, we do have sponsorships available at other levels ($250 and $500). You’ll get included in communication for other PTA events. Spirit Night – Tonight is Chick-fil-A. Coal Fire next month, McDonalds later, Ashburn Ice House later, Vocelli Pizza in December and January, McDonalds in March (they give us a lot of money), something needed for April and May.
- Corresponding Secretary Report – Tez Nettimi
- Flyers on table: 5K run – a nonprofit local to Virginia. This is their 10th year coming up. They are working to give back to local schools as part of this run. The registration is down for Liberty participants from $25 to $10 and 100% comes back to a Liberty project.
- Information Night – 9/19. There will be info about many programs for the parents. If you want your kids to participate, please come for more info.
- Committee Reports:
- After School Enrichment – VACANT. William and Jen are currently working on this but want someone to fill this role. New this year: Teacher-Led Programs. For the fall, we have a couple classes taught by teachers. Hopefully by Spring we will have more programs.
- American Education Week – VACANT. Teacher breakfast and sending out flyers. Not a whole lot here; it’s a school participation event.
- Children’s Diversity Night- Sandy Toor. Last year it was a successful event. It’s an opportunity for students to show off their diversity. This can be where you’re from, an ability that you have, language, etc. We had one of the teachers teach braille. When they come across differences, it’s not so surprising. The goal is exposure to different cultures, music, sounds, textures, etc. I appreciate any input for offerings for this night and feedback on last year’s event. This is a great free family event.
- Beautification & Outdoor Classrooms – Sonia Chauhan. They may want a co-chair.
- Box Tops – Karin Lisack. She takes the time to go through each box top, make sure they don’t expire, and send them in. Box Tops now has an app which allows you to make purchases and upload them to the app, without cutting the boxes.
- Eagle Eye Dad – William Perry. September 11, 7:30 a.m. is the big kickoff. Donuts with Dads before the Patriot Day assembly. This is open to family men: dads, uncles, grandfathers. There aren’t a lot of men in the building so we aim to get men here and that it’s okay to help. The teachers like it because we help them with whatever they need done.
- Fifth Grade Celebration Parent – VACANT. If you have a 5th Grader, this is their big party – the graduation from elementary school. This cannot happen without having these parents there.
- Laps for Liberty – Anne Corej. Anne has been with Laps since starting. This is the 4th year. We used to sell a bunch of things like wrapping paper, cookie dough, etc. so this replaces all of that. Monday is the kickoff where they get the t-shirts and the pledge form, which needs to be returned by 9/19. We need people to help count laps, cheer them on, etc. Once we get inside we need 2 volunteers from each classroom. We take the pledge card and prepare it to be sent home. We turn over 1,000+ envelopes in one day. We have gotten more efficient over time. Please, if you can volunteer, please do.
- LEAP Liaison/alternate – VACANT. Paul: Loudoun Education Alliance of Parents isn’t fully endorsed by LCPS any more. We may not need a representative here. There were some politics in this. There are many opportunities for parents to be involved at the district level.
- MSAAC – VACANT 3rd Wednesday of the month at the LCPS Admin Building in Ashburn. At these meetings, I noticed that participation has been dwindling. The voice here is definitely heard; there are things that come up here that go to Principal’s meetings, hiring meetings, etc. Mostly it’s to champion diversity among students. If you’re someone who has this as a passion, even if you don’t know much about it, it’s enlightening to be there.
- Newsletter – Jill DeLorenzo – No report.
- Odyssey of the Mind – Tezeswari Nettimi. Info session in September.
- Reflections – Meenal Manikandan – No report.
- Room Parent Coordinator – Sandy Toor
- School Supply Kits – VACANT. End of the year. Just about getting orders in.
- SEAC – Alicia Vaughn. They meet once per month. This is great to get people engaged in special education.
- Spirit Wear – Jeff Geurin. If there’s something you want to see here, please let us know. New: flannel pants are perfect for Pajama Day. The current ordering session ends September 14.
- Student Dance – Kerri Lewis.
- Teacher Appreciation Week – VACANT. This is at the end of the school year right before Mother’s Day. We love to spoil our teachers.
- Teacher Welcome Lunch – Jen Robinette. Sandy Toor helped out a lot with this, which was fantastic. Teachers had Anita’s for lunch and had a really great time with the raffles. We may bring back raffles some other times.
- Website – Jen Robinette/ William Perry. William has been helpful with getting the domain set up. We are becoming more digital-friendly so that email passdown is more consistent and you can track what’s been said beforehand. We are also getting set up digitally for after-school enrichment. By next week you’ll see these programs come up. If you see any website changes that need to be made, let us know.
- Family Engagement – Special training by Becky Pierce and Turner Donaldson.
Family Engagement vs. Family Involvement.
Involved: write down dates and go to events.
Engaged: a part of it. Team with the teacher.
When everyone’s engaged, student attendance and test scores improved; better social skills. Decreased discipline issues. Increased feeling of parental self-efficacy. You can have richer discussions about school at home. Everyone benefits.
Six Types of Parent Engagement: Parenting, communicating, volunteering, learning at home, decision making, collaborating with community. Families often come in and help with PBL/STEM projects.
In order to have families be engaged, we know you need to feel welcome, appreciated, and heard. We want to be a “Partnership School”. PTA serves as the bridge to build a partnership school.
So many PTA events bring in families to do things WITH their kids, to learn alongside them. Our kids see that we want to learn as much as we want them to learn.
What do we feel comfortable doing in the upper grades? Oftentimes we will see more involvement in the lower grades but not as much in the upper grades beyond coming in and copying.
Ideas: learning about famous Americans (saying, I was alive during this historical time; I can share pictures and experiences about this); guest readers.
There are both daytime and evening opportunities so that parents can be as much a part of their learning as possible.
- Thank you - Jen – THANK YOU for coming today. This really does take members being here for us to conduct business like voting. The timing can be tough for working parents. A lot of time what this comes down to is the availability of the volunteers and the teachers who are here. We always are welcome to entertaining the evening hours, but we also recognize that the families in our school have a lot of evening activities too. Part of putting this on the live Twitter feed helps us reach as many people as possible. Join Facebook, Twitter, Remind, and Liberty parent groups. If you have friends that aren’t in the parent groups, please add them.
- Adjourn
Meeting replay video available here: https://twitter.com/LCPSLiberty/status/1037052585960767488