Friends Meeting Minutes ~ November 2015

Friends of Southwest Charter School
Monthly Meeting
November 3, 2015

Dates to Remember:

Nov. 6th Community Coffee & All School Lunch
Nov. 11th Veterans Day, No School
Nov. 13th Deadline for Run for the Arts donations
Nov. 20th RFA Assembly & Trimester Ends
Nov. 23-27th No School, Thanksgiving Holiday

Minutes

Open Forum Community Comments

The Playground Committee will be meeting tomorrow. Parents, staff and admin are working together on improvements and safety concerns.

Kathy Price will be teaching a Positive Discipline program for parents starting in December. It will be a 7-part series meeting 2 Tuesdays per month for 2 months. It will first be open to SW Charter parents and then if there is space, it will be open to the greater community.

New Administrator at SWCS — Suzanne Perry

Suzanne Perry, our new Executive Director, joined us this evening. Welcome!

We all went around the room and introduced ourselves to Suzanne.

There were many questions asked by parents. Here are just a few of the questions and a summary of Suzanne’s responses:

How much transition time will there be until Anne leaves? Suzanne wants to take things slow. She wants to get to know the kids, teachers and staff. She sees a few quick changes that could be made. Anne is planning on staying on till winter break in December.
What do you see as the biggest opportunity and biggest challenge at SW Charter? An opportunity to advance the rigor and add structure. Take the steps needed to bring the kids to the next level and building a system of excellence.
What steps would you take to improve SW Charter’s performance on state tests? Suzanne would focus on improving the content knowledge of the teachers. Show teachers how to teach when kids don’t get it.
Our kids are struggling with math? Singapore math is a better solution than the curricula we used before, but there are better options out there.

There were more questions and quite a bit of discussion.

Run for the Arts – Adrienne

We met our goal! We are just over the $20,000.

The awards assembly and animal kissing will be Friday, November 20th. Sarah Gilmore is coordinating. On the auction website, we have set up an online donation area for Run for the Arts.

Here is the link: https://swcs.schoolauction.net/2016auction/give

Please send the link to your friends and family. Deadline for online donations is Friday, November 13th.

We pay Young Audiences for our Run for the Arts event which includes forms, small prizes, list of artists, etc. They take15% of our profits!

Next year, we are going to coordinate our own Run for the Arts-type event. Friends has approved a subcommittee to begin working on it. We already have several people who want to work on this. Kathy has experience with planning a run-a-thon without Young Audiences at Jackson Middle. She is willing to be on the subcommittee.

We want to make sure that accounting is in place to ensure that all funds raised goes to arts funding and doesn’t get used elsewhere.

New Chair for FoSWCS

Christina has officially stepped down as Friends’ President.

Unfortunately, no one at tonight’s meeting volunteered to take on the position.

The President’s duties include creating agendas, running monthly meetings, attend school board meetings, be the face of Friends, and do some networking and delegating.

Auction Update

Carrie is putting together the procurement team. Most procuring is done via email rather than telephone or in person.

Carrie will be scheduling a procurement meeting in the next week.

The Auction Committee is also looking for people to join the Item Entry team.

The theme for the auction is Vintage Hollywood Ball. It will be Saturday, February 20, 2016 at the Multnomah Athletic Club.

Committee Update – Elise

Elise got a good response from the community for her committee opening email.

Here are some of the things that are now covered: