12/14/22 PTO Meeting Minutes

Board members in attendance: Corey Dukes, Mollie Olinyk, Krista Dunger, Alison Etter, Bridget Gruber, Judith Eveler, Miranda Budine, Corey Ryder, Jill Shiffert, Kristin Baker

Meeting called to order: 6:45 pm (late because of Zoom technical difficulties)

Updates

• Principal Update

  • Eberwhite will hold a MLK celebration where parents are welcome. Info will be sent out soon via email.

• Teacher Appreciation

  • We are wrapping up “countdown to giving” for teachers and staff. $20 Amazon gift cards were given for all the staff members for the winter holidays.

• Spirit Wear

  • Spirit wear t-shirt and sweatshirt designs are set to go. PTO will begin selling spirit wear in January after the winter break. Sales will be online and order form (cash/check).

NAAPID Day proposal 

• • The idea is to engage, inspire, involve and motivate Eberwhite parents to come to the school and celebrare, learn, share and unite the diversity in the community. The intent is to make this an annual event with a new culture being celebrated each year.

  • Monday, Feb 13, 2023

  • 5th graders guide parents on classroom visits in the morning

  • Lunch for staff and parents only will be provided by Cuppy’s Best Soul Food

  • Appearance and Q&A by Supriya Kelkar (author, ‘Strong as Fire, Fierce as Flame’)

  • Afternoon and Evening musical performance of the play “The Quilt Speaks, the Secret Messages of Songs and Quilts”by 4th and 5th graders

  • Total Cost: $2081.06

    • Proposed to be split 50/50 school and PTO

• Krista - shared about grant rubric and invited Mr. Willets/Ms. Blair to submit proposal. PTO will vote on to approve via email after the proposal is submitted.

Events

• Winter Events survey

  • 100 responses from the survey. Consensus is for the Winter Woods Lantern Walk with cocoa and cookies on Feb. 11th. The details will come in January. 

• Mind Fair

  • Volunteer judges. Host after school sessions in Jan. and Feb. for students who need help with their projects. The event will take place on March 1-2, 2023

• Family Reading Night and Family Heritage Night event ideas are in the works

Sustainability

• Green Schools Award Application. Application opens in January. Bridget will work with Ms. Hubbard on filling it out. 

• PTO closet clean out recap

  • Tell your teachers to take what they need from supply shelf with surplus of napkins, utensils, plates, paper towels

  • Need help moving out one large heavy trash item

  • Thank you Ann for taking truckload of donations to PTO thrift shop!

  • Still need to organize/sort through decade dance bins 

  • What to do with cupboard full of adult size tees? We think these t-shirt were a misorder in 2020 and the company sent adult t-shirts instead of child sizes. The correct child sizes were distributed to students and we are left with many adult size t-shirts. Possible ideas are to give the t-shirts away at future Eberwhite events and/or distribute them to new staff that need spirit wear.

PTO Council

• DEI, 12 Days of Giving, Helping Hands/Gardens/DEI committees/Field Trips, and Safety

• Questions regarding Field Trip funding: 

  • Would someone be able to summarize how our PTO handles funding for field trips? 

    • PTO covers one trip per class

    • The 3rd grade and 5th grade trips are a little bigger and funded in part by class parents

  • Do we have a policy or guidelines that we can share?

  • Do we handle curriculum field trips differently? For example, one of the other schools is looking to fund a field trip to Lansing for their third graders and looking for ideas on how other schools like us are covering the cost. I know we've talked about the 3rd grade Lansing trip at past PTO meetings, but I did not catch the final decision about funding and details.

    • Relevant teachers (i.e. Mrs. Bernstein) does the behind-the-scenes legwork

Fundraising (Armen and Kristen are unable to attend)

• Spirit Wear will happen in January

• Take out Thursday update? No update at this meeting.

Budget

• PTOC Questions

• Decade dance income was $2,000 in past years if we want to consider bringing it back next school year. Survey consensus was to not hold an indoor event this winter.

• Scholastic Book Fair

  • Fall book fair was successful! The library gains $3,600 scholastic dollars to spend on new library books.

• Nicola’s/Schuler’s 

  • $677 was made and will go to the library

Meeting adjourned at 8:00 p.m.