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December 2, 2008Irvington PTA minutes December 02, 2008 6:30pm –8pm Musical performance by Daniel Brixius’ 3rd grade students. Thanks you Daniel + the 3rd grade class. Celebration! Cynthia thanked both the Irvington community mosaic sculpture bench team and school garden volunteers. We had a lovely celebration of thank you, cake, slide show, student created thank you cards and wonderful stories of sculpture + school garden creation. On behalf of Irvington School and the PTA, we thank all those that were involved with our wonderful bench structure + school garden: PTA business meeting followed the celebration. 1. Welcome – Irma 2. Introduction of our new assistant principal Lisa McCall. Her transition to our school has been comfortable and easy. She is really enjoying our school and its community. Lisa will try to come to PTA meetings, as her home + work schedule allows. 3. Auction Update – Tiffany. a. Sponsorships for the auction are down as compared to last year – current collected amount is $8,000. It will take approximately $23,000 to pay for the auction itself (ballroom rental, food, and auctioneer). Sponsorships + purchased tickets pay for the actual auction. Historically sponsorships pay for the auction so that all the money raised at the actual event goes directly to the school/PTA and is not used for auction expenses. b. Cash donations for sponsorships are encouraged. One doesn’t have to donate a large amount – any amount is welcome. c. Tickets will go on sale after the New Year. d. Auction meeting Thursday, December 4th @ Rachel’s house, 2746 NE 12th Street. Please join us. Help is still needed for a variety of tasks. e. PTA supports the auction team in their great efforts to organize our school’s biggest fundraiser. In light of the economy we want to stress that whatever we can raise as a school community is GREAT. The auction team should not feel pressure to meet last year’s goal or expectations. Thank you to all those working on this year’s auction. 4. November minutes approved. 5. Budget Highlights: a. Gift-wrap fundraiser brought in approximately $4300. Still awaiting on line order takes. Thanks to Rachel Reich for her efforts in running this fundraiser. b. Scrip is doing well. Safeway contributions are up. Lisa has really re-invigorated our Scrip program. Thank you Lisa Meilinger! Please remember to use/buy Scrip for you holiday purchases. You can give not once but twice by purchasing Scrip gift cards. Orders due this Monday. c. 2007 auction special appeal funds are spent – last of the receipts coming in. d. We are beginning to spend the 2006 Library Auction special appeal funds. e. PTA has paid for registration of our NEW middle school girls/boys basketball teams. No games yet – they just started practice! f. Garden has just put up a new entrance + gate. Garden has almost completed its spending this year. 6. Irvington Neighborhood Association has offered their home tour café to our school community for the 2nd year in a row. Home tour is in May 2009. One parent has stepped up to co-lead the café. Would anyone else be interested in helping organize this year’s café? The café raised about $1500 last year and was a lot of fun. Principal’s Update7. Irvington has lost its Title 1 funding for 2009-10. For a school to receive Title 1 funds, 40% of the school’s population must qualify for free and reduced lunch (poverty level ratings). This year, 33% of Irvington’s student population qualifies for free and reduced lunch. Therefore we have lost our Title 1 funding. Results of this loss on our Kindergarten: a. Kindergarten will no longer be free; it will be fee for service. Tuition next year for full day Kindergarten is $320 per month. Kindergarten is FREE for families that qualify for free AND reduced lunch. b. Irvington School has a full day kindergarten. Our program is not a ½ day program. The state funds ½ day programs only; we need 14 paying families to get a full day Kindergarten @ Irvington. The remainder of the families can then be made up of paying students and students who qualify for free and reduced lunch. c. If a family cannot afford full day Kindergarten but does not qualify for free and reduced lunch, the child may go home at lunch but please be aware that the Kindergarten program is structured for a full day. d. We have no idea how many Kindergarteners we will have next year, how many students are enrolled or what the configurations may be. e. Cynthia has a lot of information from the district on the Kindergarten changes. Please stop in at the office if you have any questions or need additional information. 8. Results of Title 1 funding on our general school: a. A variety of teacher/staff salaries are paid by Title 1 funds – Kindergarten teachers/aids, writing coach, reading intervention program, etc. It’s highly probable that we will suffer staffing losses with this change. b. As our country and state struggles economically, so will our schools. Cynthia assures us that she will make cuts away from the classroom before making cuts to direct classroom services. 9. Middle School. Cynthia + Lisa + staff are planning for this year’s recruitment of 5th graders to our middle school. They will be ready for recruitment in January as “School Choice” deadlines approach. Our middle school has improved since its inception and now looks pretty strong in comparison to other middle schools. 10. 8th grade transition to high school. Cynthia + Lisa are exploring 8th grade promotion activities: what do other schools do to transition learners from 8th to 9th grade? How do we facilitate a successful transition for our kids? How can we uniquely celebrate our students’ transition from 8th to 9th grade? Expect more information on this transition in the coming months. If you would like to help with planning this very exciting time, please contact Cynthia and/or Lisa. 11. Thanks to all for coming to our PTA meeting tonight! PTA Committee / Event UpdatesDecember 2nd, 2008 Tech CommitteeThe technology committee met on November 7 with IT staff from Portland Public Schools. At that meeting, the committee learned that the Chief Financial Officer for PPS has approved the purchase of a second computer lab for Irvington to support the K-8 transition. No specific time frame has been established but a likely date is Fall, 2009. The committee is also researching ways to upgrade the communications infrastructure at the school with a new phone system, either through district support or grant funding or both. Several other actions have also been taken in the past few weeks. PPS installed 10 new apple desktops in the computer lab that were purchased by the school with district funds. To help manage the lab, the PTA recently purchased and installed Apple desktop management software. This will allow teachers to monitor student’s use of the computers and ease the difficulty with transitioning between classes and after school activities. A purchase order is also being prepared for four additional media carts to support the classrooms that want to use the carts on a more regular basis. The carts are identical to those purchased earlier in the year with PTA funding. The technology funds had an original budget of $40,000, and with this purchase a balance of approximately $8,000 remains. The committee is also discussing how to establish policies and volunteer support for both the computer lab and the library computers, as well as increasing lab access after hours. Doug Carlson, Tech Chair. Wrapping Paper FundraiserIrvington raised $4,000 from the gift-wrap fundraiser. Thanks to all the families that participated. Rachel reports that it’s a pretty easy fundraiser to run and it would help to have 2 people run it next year. Might also be good to designate a certain beneficiary (activity or grade level school need). Thanks to Rachel, the families that purchased giftwrap and all the volunteers that made this fundraiser so successful. Grant Cluster PTA’s – UpdateThe grant cluster PTA leadership meets monthly. We meet to network, support our work, reach out to other PTA’s and share ideas. Here’s some news about/around the grant clusters: 1. PPS has a new Coordinator of Family and Community Services. Reiko Williams took over the job from Andre Jackson last month, so she is the person assigned by PPS to talk and liaison with PTA’s across Portland. Reiko will join our cluster meeting on Tuesday, December 16th @ Grand Central Bakery, Fremont. 2. We have 2 new PTA’s in town. Of course one is our very own Boise-Eliot (hurrah!). The 2nd is a Special Use PTA, created by activist parent Chloe Eudaly to represent the needs of Students, Parents and Teachers of children with Special Needs. This PTA is spread across the city - 5 at one school, 2 at another, etc., and we all have parents at our schools that would want to know of this PTA support group. 3. The NE Portland PTA's will be meeting the early afternoon of Jan. 18th at Kennedy School. Put it on the Calendar! PTA leadership across NE Portland will come together to meet, share ideas, network and build a stronger NE PDX PTA system. Imagine what we can do for all our kids if we work together. SCHOLARSHIPS Upcoming Events12/04, Auction Meeting, 9am, Rachel Carlson’s house, 2746 NE 12th Street. 12/08, Scrip due, 3:30pm, School Office. 12/15, PTA Exec Team meeting, 7-9pm, School Library. All PTA committee coordinators welcome. 12/15, Site Council meeting, 4-6pm, School Library. School community welcome. 12/10-12, 6-9 pm, Book Fair Fundraiser, Barnes & Nobles, Lloyd Center. 20% of the proceeds raised on these nights will come to Irvington for the 8th grade Washington DC trip. We have arranged for Karen Barker's Tumblers to perform and Renee's choir to sing on one of the nights. 1/08/09, Auction Meeting, 9am, Kate Quisling’s house, 2637 ME 12th Avenue 1/08/09 (Thursday), PTA Meeting, 6:30pm – 8pm, School Library, PTA provided free childcare. Last updated by szich on Jan 16, 2009 at 09:11 AM |
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