Dear Parents,
As your upcoming PTO President for the 2017/18 school year, I wanted to take a few minutes to talk to you about next year and what you can do to help us make it the best year ever.
I have been on the board for two years now serving as Membership Coordinator last year and Vice President this year. It’s been an awesome experience and I’ve agreed to stay on for one more year as President. Our school is an amazing community and I feel very blessed that my children have been able to grow and learn here. I am pleased to be joined by an amazing group of officers for next year.
Our 2017/18 Board:
- President: Crystal Freemon
- Vice President: Michelle Lindsey
- Second Vice President: Tina Martini
- Secretary: Shemel Jackson
- Treasurer: Emily Denson
- Volunteer Coordinator (Non-Voting Committee Chair): Erin Gribben
This past year we have been able to do some wonderful things thanks to the support of parents, teachers, staff and our business community. With your help, we were able to fully fund the new STEM lab this year with over $8,000 worth of science kits, lego classroom kits and other activities to promote hands-on learning for all of our students. This would not have been possible without the help of volunteers. I will be writing another blog post in the next few weeks giving a summary of our financials for the year.
This summer, we are considering funding some other major projects and are working on some awesome goals for next year, but we need your help to make it the best year yet. We want to make a few changes with how the PTO operates, and really want to make a big push to get more people involved. We would like to have a slightly smaller executive board than before, but with adding on a lot more committees. We hope that breaking the work up into smaller pieces will allow those who maybe cannot commit to serving all year on the executive board an opportunity to serve.
Another change we want to make for next year is that we will not be hiring Boosterthon for our Fun Run. While we believe that they did a wonderful job, we did not like having to pay them such a high percentage of what we made. This year, we will be using another company that provides the online services that will allow each child to have a pledge page and help us to track donations. This will mean that we will need a lot more volunteers to help with the Fun Run, but we will be able to keep almost all of the money that we raise. We are really excited about this and believe we will be able to fund a lot more wonderful projects for the school from the extra money we will be able to keep from the fundraiser.
Other things we want to plan for next year include monthly spirit nights with local businesses, and implementing a teacher grant program to put more money back into each classroom to directly help each child. We do want to let you know in advance that there will not be a school dance next year, but there will be lots of other fun events planned for our families.
So right now we need one thing from each of you. Please take a minute to fill out our volunteer form and let us know how you are able to help out next year. Every little bit helps and there are many options available from heading a committee, to just helping out at a specific event (or even just sending in supplies). Can you imagine what an amazing school we would have if every parent just donated 30 minutes of their time throughout the year?
We will be planning a volunteer breakfast in August to talk to more of you in person, but if you could please take five minutes to fill out the form and share with other parents you know who may be willing to get involved, we would really appreciate it.
Thank you,
Crystal Freemon
chapmansretreatpto.com 