Friends of SW Charter School Meeting
December 4, 2012
Meeting Minutes
December Staff Appreciation
At this time, each classroom should be organizing their own holiday gifts for teachers.
In addition, the Friends are organizing a party for teachers, staff and their partners. Heather is coordinating the party to be held at Amanda’s house on Friday, December 14th. It will consist of savory appetizers and alcohol. There will be about 30 attendees. Heather will be collecting donations at our AM Coffee on Thursday, December 6th. Jen and Krista will bring wine/beer. Hanne, Christina and others volunteered to bring in appetizers.
Teacher Amanda’s birthday is tomorrow. Heather will bring in a little cake and bring it to the staff party on December 14th.
Krista has the class photos to give to teachers as holiday gifts. Jen will purchase (9) 8” x 10” frames from Ikea. Liz and Heather will wrap. Heather will deliver to the party.
Christina suggested that room reps could use PayPal to collect teacher holiday gift donations from families. This might work well for parents who drop off their kids and don’t come into the building very often. As long as it’s labeled, parents can also put money in the lockbox at the front desk.
Community Life
Thursday 12/6 – AM Coffee after drop-off
Tuesday 12/11 – Hillsdale Pizzicato fundraiser. We get 20% of sales. We are also having a pizza lunch for students that same day. Pizza is $2 a slice. Parents will pre-order and pre-pay. The 7th/8th graders will help serve. Marlene sent a link to the order form in today’s newsletter.
Thursday 1/31 – Free community matinee movie at the Bagdad Theater. Doors will open at 10:45 am, concessions begin at 11 am and the movie will begin at noon. Lunch will be available in the restaurant. We still need to decide what movie to show.
Juli has been busily contacting potential auction donors and has also already secured many gift certificates from area businesses.
Craft Day on Sunday, December 2nd was a success! It gave us a framework for what our free family events should look like – simple, low-key, and easy! Adults and kids had so much fun. We had approximately 35 people. We had 5 craft stations — clay with Mike, paintable frames with Melissa Allen, snowflakes, cards, and friendship bracelets. 2 hours was a good time period for this event.
Other ideas for a free community event in the spring are:
- Kickball with Kenny and Seth
- Family reading night (April?) – Krista has a kit for this
- Jessica Nichols is working on a science/math night (February)
- Rock climbing at the Circuit Gym – Some would like to have the event at the Coleman’s newer gym (Sandy & Burnside) because there are more climbing areas for younger kids.
Auction Committee Update
Grey Whelan has completed the auction flyer and it looks great.
Christina and Nicki met with Chris to go over the auction software.
Procurement packets are coming together and will go out to families before winter break. Procurement forms will be out soon and will be put on the blog.
Mailer to past donors will go out after the holidays.
Auction committee is looking for a wall of wine coordinator. This year we are selling individual bottles of wine, instead of doing a raffle for the entire lot. We are looking for someone who can collect the wine and be available to work the night of the auction. Some names mentioned who might be available for this and other auction night activities: Elizabeth K. might be able to do the booth at night. Emily Cox wants to do a Mystery Envelopes shift night of auction.
Auction committee also needs a Display/Signs for items coordinator – ideally it should be someone who is comfortable with graphic design/artistic. Cheryl Willson was mentioned as a possibility.
We are considering pre-selling 10-seat tables for $360 instead of $400. Friends can go in together on a table. We’ll try it and see if it works.
Individual auction ticket prices are currently $40 per ticket; $45 at the door.
We like the idea of having a raffle as an incentive to purchase your tickets early.
We will include a checkbox on the ticket order form for sponsoring a teacher (covering the cost of his or her ticket) again this year. We will also include an option for families to contribute partial amounts of a sponsorship — $5, $10, etc.
Once the auction menu is set, we will post the menu to get people excited. We may also have a specialty cocktail for the evening.
Reimbursement Protocol
The school office has requested that reimbursements be turned in within a month of the purchase and within the fiscal quarter. Also, keep in mind that when you submit a reimbursement form, make a copy for Sarah Gilmore and give Karen in the office the original form and your receipts. Reimbursement forms are in the school office in the drawer underneath pink treasure chest.
Morning Safety Patrol
In the morning, Kathy would like to open up the other crosswalk at Moody and Bancroft, but she needs to have more adult volunteers. Volunteers would have to be available at 8:10 am till about 8:40 am. We discussed how we could make this happen. Ideas included assigning a class each month or using SignUpGenius. We’d need 5 parents who can make a commitment for the month for a day of the week. We could try asking parents to commit to a time period such as January – March or April – June. An incentive might be to offer before-care to kids whose parents are helping at crosswalk. We need to approach parents who are consistently early and ask if they’d be part of this team.
Volunteer appreciation coordinator
Volunteer appreciation week will take place in April 2013. We need volunteers to coordinate our efforts. This is a nice, compact event that someone with limited availability could work on. We need a coordinator plus a couple helpers.
May staff appreciation committee
Hanne has volunteered to coordinate staff appreciation week in May! She will need several helpers.
Other Business
Lack of Books – Heather expressed concern that some classes, especially Paul’s room, have very few books for the kids to look at during reading time. We discussed organizing a book drive where we could ask our community to donate books that their kids are done with or have outgown. Middle school families might have a lot of books to donate. We are particularly looking for books at 3rd and 4th grade reading levels for Paul and Susan’s class. Heather and Krista will talk to Paul and Susan about key authors, genres, titles. Caroline Falcone and Erica Bailey would be willing to go through books received and sort books by reading level. Heather will talk to them about it. Maybe we could have community drop off books to donate at 1st Thursday coffee in January.
Another option is to see if we can get books through Multnomah County Library.
We checked with Marlene to see if the school needs anything for the emergency clothes closet. Most needed are clothes for Kindergarten through 4th grade (size 12), especially tops, bottoms, and socks.
We may also look into donations from two consignment shops. A kindergarten parent owns Daisies and Dinos and Sarah G. will check in with Sweet Peas consignment.
Next meeting: January 8, 2013 7 pm @ SWCS
A Google Doc is these minutes is available at: https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B3DbXTFz7e1Fb1BIX2g1cjZSemM
Friends of Southwest Charter School 