Friends of SW Charter
Monthly Meeting Minutes
January 12, 2016
Upcoming Dates
- January 18 No School/MLK Day
- January 21 SWCS Board Meeting 7:30
- January 28 Wall of Wine collection begins
- January 29 Deadline for auction donations
- February 5 FOSWCS Morning Coffee
- February 5 Deadline to turn in Signup Party forms
- February 9 FOSWCS Meeting 6:30 @ Elephants on Corbett
- February 15 Presidents’ Day – No School for Students
- February 17 Classroom Auction Art Project Preview
- February 18 SWCS Board Meeting 7:30
- February 20 Vintage Hollywood Ball Dinner & Auction
Auction Update
No one present from the Auction Committee tonight.
Earthquake/Emergency Preparedness Committee (Emilie)
The committee had their first meeting last month. Emilie discussed the Red Cross Ready program as something we might want to do. The American Red Cross Ready Rating™, is a membership program designed to help businesses, organizations and schools become better prepared for emergencies. Members join this free, self-paced program and complete a 123-point self-assessment of your level of preparedness to reveal areas for improvement. Much of the assessment the kids could be involved in. It would give our school a baseline of what needs to be done.
Emilie has also reached out to PPS to get their emergency preparedness plans. We are in an information gathering process now.
Next step is to assess our preparedness priorities, discuss with Suzanne, and think of ways to involve the upper grades.
Next meeting: Friday, January 15th 8:30 am Elephants on Corbett
Student Art Exhibit at the Geezer Gallery/Staff Party Updates
The Student Art Show at the Geezer Gallery was a big success!
Melissa and Jenny are now working with the Geezer Gallery and the Mirabella on an interactive art program.
We received all positive feedback from staff about the food and drink parents provided for the staff holiday party.
Student Directory (Adrienne)
Adrienne met with Anne and Suzanne last month.
The Board has approved a new policy allowing us to disclose contact information for a student directory. The school will post the new policy in the Family Handbook and send out, through various methods, a notification of the new policy in order to create a directory. Families have the choice to opt out of the directory, but must do so within15 business days. Then we will be able to publish. We may be late with a directory this year, but we’ll be all set for next year.
Crafternoon (Liz)
We’ll set a date after the auction. Too much going on right now.
Budget (Elise)
We have December financial numbers from Karen!
Total expenses for the year are $847, which is way below what we budgeted.
When Elise met with school administration at the beginning of the school year, it seemed that the rolling over of earned FOSWCS money to the next fiscal year was a done deal.
Now, the Board says we cannot roll earned money over and it goes away if we don’t spend it. Elise is trying to schedule another meeting with Anne, Suzanne, Anna, and Karen to clarify and get more information. We surmise we may not be able to roll over earned money is because we are not 401c organization. That could be the Board’s reasoning.
This raised the question of whether we should look into exploring becoming a true PTA with 401c status. Kathy said we may want to look into this because as it now stands we don’t have control over any of the money we raise.
Elise will do some preliminary research on what it takes for us to become a 401c.
Farewell Party for Anne
Melissa is starting to plan a farewell party for Anne. We don’t know when Anne’s final day will be. She may be staying on through spring testing and enrollment.
We have money in the budget for a party, but we can’t afford to have the event outside of school.
Kathy, who has known Anne since the planning of SWCS, believes Anne would enjoy a farewell that involves the kids.
We may also do a little something at the auction. Kathy suggested that it would be fun to bring back the people who made the school happen and give a little history of Anne’s role in creating SWCS.
Oregon Ballet Theater
In early January, OBT moved in next door to us at 720 SW Bancroft. Aileah suggested that it would be great to form a relationship with them.
Cigarettes Butts
Hanne expressed concern about the 100’s of cigarette butts by the trolley tracks next to school. She will talk to property management at the Grey’s Landing building.
This might be something of interest to Field Work Coordinator Sarah Anderson.
School Board Report (Jessica)
The school board will have their 2nd annual strategic planning meeting at Edgefield on January 30th.
The Board elected a new secretary – Brian and a new treasurer – Dan.
Kathy
Kathy would like to plan another clothing exchange party, but not as an auction sign-up party. She is already doing several signup parties for the auction.
Restaurant Nights
Lisa (Christopher’s mom) has volunteered to arrange restaurant nights!
Pizzicato Dough for Dollars: March 1st and May/June at Hillsdale location
McMenamins: Waiting for a response
Spaghetti Factory: Waiting for a response
Burgerville (25th & Powell location): Possibly in mid-February but we’d need 5-8 student volunteers to bring food trays out to customers and clean tables. Not sure of the percentage of sales we get.
Teacher Grants
No update at this time.
Chickens
We are continuing to have difficulty finding volunteers to take care of the chickens in the garden area. The one remaining chicken has been removed. Now that Mike no longer hatches the chicks, the kids don’t have as much as connection with the chickens.
We wonder whether there’s teacher willing to take responsibility for the chickens. Maybe either 3rd or 6th grades might be good. Perhaps teacher Lisa would be interested?
Carpooling
On January 8th, Liz sent out the carpooling information from Shannon on Facebook and the blog, but it still has not been shared with the entire community through school emails.
Meeting Night Change?
We decided to move our monthly meetings from the 1st Tuesday of the month to the 2nd Tuesday. Elise will have the financial report from Karen by then. Therefore, our next meeting will be Tuesday, February 9th.
Get a Google docs version of the January 2016 minutes here.
Friends of Southwest Charter School 