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CAPITOL HILL PARENT TEACHER ORGANIZATION
(PTO)
MEETING MINUTES
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 5, 2007, 7:00 PM
Business Meeting
PTO President
Darlene Haecker called the meeting to order.
Minutes from the
October 2007 meeting were unavailable for approval.
Budget
(Carolyn Larson): Budget is in place, largely from last year,
and totals $32,560. This amount is
solid based on past years’ receipts from direct drive and April Carnival
fundraisers. In 2008/09 40% of budget
will be run through rubric. Line items
such as welcome dinners, directory, newsletter will not be subjected to
rubric. Motion to approve budget as
submitted passed.
Principal’s
Report (Louis Mariucci): Front office staff has been hired and will
start in December.
Grace Raymond
will become the Curriculum Coordinator.
She will observe and work with teachers on Parallel Curriculum. Since she used to handle open houses and
incoming parent tours and questions that piece needs to be picked up by others,
potentially parents. Many parents feel
more comfortable talking to parents with kids at CH instead of school staff.
Additional
$100,000 from Site Council has been used to increase jr. high staff, increase
Grace Raymond’s time, and put $20,000 toward scholarships for after school
language programs. We are also
upgrading computer lab a bit at a time.
Cafeteria tables will be replaced by round tables with 8 seats bolted to
tables. Schools that have used this
configuration have seen lowered discipline, noise issues.
Old Business
Directory
(Ayesha Shariff): Many late responses this year. Should be ready to distribute by
Thanksgiving. No rough draft printed
this year due to expense and confusion surrounding draft format vs. final
format. Parents uncomfortable with
having this information online for review.
Playground:
Jan Nixon not present. Decision
as to whether refurbish or replace old equipment will be made at meeting on
Nov. 13th. Fundraising gala
is February 23rd at the Children’s Museum with Mayor Coleman as
keynote speaker.
Dances:
Discussion about dates, who will organize. Ed Davis will coordinate 1-3rd dance on February 29th, 4th-6th grade dance
will be March 6th and Carolyn Larson will head up this effort.
Newsletter(Maggie
O’Reilly): All is well,
proceeding nicely.
Listserv:
Mike Caerwyn and Ed Davis offered to explore hardware and usage
issues. Want to set this up for use
next year. Parents could be sent an
email invite to submit contact info, or could be handled by room parents. Must be voluntary.
Fundraising/Direct
Drive: Darlene is working on direct drive letter,
will send rough draft to officers, past officers for feedback.
- Still looking for parent to handle
tshirts.
- Carolyn volunteers to be Carnival
chair, and Laura Park agrees to submit volunteer request for
newsletter. The date for the
carnival is April 18, 2008.
- Rakes! Rakes! Rakes! Need
after school groups to generate ideas for ways to get rid of 14,000 rakes.
- Milk lids and Box Tops just sitting
around. Need volunteer to take
over.
PTO Bylaws:
Annie Yetter to look in to updating bylaws to reflect our current way of
working.
Meeting
change: Darlene proposed changing meetings to
6:30-7:30pm for open agenda items, and tackling issues requiring votes such as
funding requests from 7:45-8:45 pm. It
was suggested that it was critical to maintain transparency of PTO
decision-making, and for parents to feel included, not isolated. Mr. Mariucci suggested that if officers
didn’t want to take immediate vote on funding issues raised, that the vote
could be taken at next PTO meeting.
Meeting
adjourned 8:55 pm.
Respectfully
submitted by Annie Yetter from notes transcribed by Aerine Caerwyn.
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