Friends of Southwest Charter School

Meeting Minutes

January 8, 2013

Community Life – Juli

The results of the Pizzicato Pizza Lunch Day in December were mixed. It was a hit with the kids, but we didn’t earn much money. Some of the causes for low earnings include:

• We offered pizza for lunch, so families didn’t also go out or order pizza for dinner.
• The Author Fair was also that night.
• The order form and money-collecting aspects were chaotic. It would be better to a combined online order form and online payment.

Juli is still reconciling the accounts. If we could improve the ordering/payment procedures, maybe we could offer in-school lunch twice a year. Another idea is that parents could pay for lunches up front at the beginning of the year and we would avoid some of the confusion of collecting payment.

School is looking into using an online payment system for free-based events, etc. Perhaps we could also use this system for events like the lunches. Juli mentioned the company Square as a possibility.

March 12^th is next the Pizzicato night at the Hillsdale location. We will earn a percentage from sales all day. We discussed how to get the word out to the community because the publicity materials from Pizzicato are not very eye-catching. Suggestions included teacher bulletin boards, someone with a sign outside at drop off and pick up, and teacher Shutterfly sites.

Thursday, January 31^st is the free family movie matinee at the Bagdad Theater. Doors will open at 10:45 am, concessions and the restaurant will open at 11 am, and the movie starts at noon. After some discussion, we decided to show Star Wars: A New Hope (Episode 4). We will encourage families to dress up as their favorite characters and perhaps have a costume contest and other activities.

Feb 4^th & 5^th Family Restaurant Day at Pastini Pastaria 2027 SE Division St. You have to mention SW Charter when you order. We’ll receive a percentage for take out orders, lunch, and dinner. Juli has marketing materials from them.

We’ll still pursue bouldering even though the Colemans have moved to California. Due to our other events, we are thinking of trying to schedule for early June. If The Circuit Gym is willing to donate the space, we could make it a free community event. Juli will contact Jenny to see about availability and cost. If it is a fee-based event, we don’t want to conflict with our Fulton Pub family restaurant night. Juli will contact McMenamins about the date for our restaurant night. We’ll set McMenamins date and then set bouldering date.

In May, we’re still thinking of planning a kickball party organized by Kenny.

Fundraising Update – Sarah Gilmore

Sarah shared the school’s recent fundraising report. Our Friends budget numbers didn’t look good, but we realized that there were some inaccuracies. Sarah will review the budget and clarify numbers with Karen. Basically, we are going to end the year breaking even. Since we would like to have more money in our budget and we not start every school year at zero, we are asking the School Board for a percentage of this year’s auction earnings. We will ask Karen to remind people turning in reimbursement forms to also give a copy to Sarah Gilmore.

Book Drive

At our last meeting, we talked about organizing a recycled book drive to re-stock our classrooms, particularly for the 3^rd/4^th grade classrooms. We would have parent volunteers sort the books by reading level and then allow teachers to pick from the books. Any left over books could be sold to Powells and that money could go to teachers to buy more books. We would have the book drive for a week near Valentine’s Day. We’d like to do this before it gets too close to the auction in March. Maybe have a box or resusable bag in each classroom and label it for the book drive. To tie in with Valentines’ Day, we’ll call the drive “For the Love of Reading”. Marlene will contact Wallace Books and Juli will contact Powells about donating books as well. We should have guidelines for the books donated. Criteria should include: gently used, no markings, in high demand – chapter books, series. At the next staff meeting, Marlene will ask teachers what books they’d like. Krista will check with Marlene on Friday.

Winter Free Family Event

We’d like to plan a Family Reading Night in February to go along with our book drive. Krista will work on this.

Spring Free Family Event

We’re hoping to plan a Family Math and Science night in March. Jessica is working on this.

Food Drive

Jen Litwin is going to touch base with Monica about helping with this. We thought we could do this last couple weeks of January and also have people bring a non-perishable  food item as admission to the movie at the Bagdad on January 31^st. We’d like to assemble gently used backpacks containing food for our free and reduced lunch families. The remainder of the food donated could be given to the Oregon Food Bank. Jen can get a lot of marketing materials from the OregonFood Bank. Marlene has 2 barrels we can use to collect food.

Auction (Christina and Nicki)

We have a gang of volunteers who have signed up to help. But we have some openings too.

• Sign-ups team – creating different documents
• Graphics Team Coordinator – to make flyers for event and bulletin boards.
• Decorations committee people
• We need someone just to do check-in until 6:30 pm
• We need a lot of volunteers for day of set-up/take down
• Couple more volunteers for picking up donated items at businesses

We’re going to sell a limited number of group tables. We’ll charge $360 for a 10-person table. We will be selling tickets online.

We’re working on securing sponsors for dessert, wine and beer. We won’t be working with Vinters Cellars this year. Sarah knows a wine distributor and Juli will look into her contacts. As an absolute fall back, we could get wine from Melody Ballroom and still make $2 per glass. Juli will look into Ninkasi for beer and we’re also looking at Widmer. We need 2 kegs.

We’re doing a golden ticket raffle. For $50 you get your choice of live items.

Wall of wine bottles will be individually wrapped and sold for $20. We’ll ask every family to donate a bottle worth $15 or more. We have a wall of wine coordinator – Megan. Flyer will go out soon.

Christina thanked everyone for doing procuring so far. Sarah M. is making procurement packets for people to go back to last year’s donors.

Christina shared sponsorship information with levels and sponsorship agreement to give out to potential sponosrs.

Marlene will blast out to the community what auction coordinators and team members are still needed as well as sponsorship information.

Grey is working on a header for all our auction-related emails. We hope to have this soon.

Marlene offered plastics bins to collect donations.

We’ll have a supply of procurement forms for Thursday AM Coffee.

We’re thinking of offering some small gambling games during a limited time so as not to distract from silent auction. We’ll check into Wild Bill’s.

We will ask Jeremy Weikel to put together an iPod playlist for the evening.

Other Business

Sarah is inventorying old SWCS logo swag—t-shirts, water bottles, etc. We plan to sell it at very reduced prices. An order form will go out soon. Sarah is planning on offering a new SWCS t-shirt design at the auction.

Summit Construction is putting in a french drain to alleviate the puddle at the entrance to the school. Will be happening as early as next week.
Next meeting: February 5^th 7:00 @ SWCS

A link to the minutes can also be found here.