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Stoneleigh Elementary PTA - September Meeting
Brittany Claridge - SES PTA President
I 
think Hi, you are in the right spot. We're just getting it connected to the computer screen, so just give us A minute
+2
think Hi, you are in the right spot. We're just getting it connected to the computer screen, so just give us A minute Unknown Speaker
applause. I ah,
Speaker 1
I have an idea. I You you I Think
Brittany Claridge - SES PTA President
I ahy Okay, Hi, y'all, we are just getting your computer, the big screen, up and running, and then We will get started. You. I I Think
Speaker 2
six, One, Uh,
Brittany Claridge - SES PTA President
I'm 
that There we go. All right, hi, everyone. Can folks that are in the virtual room, can you just do like a thumbs up or something in the chat? If you can hear please, okay, thumbs up, yay. Awesome. All right. Let me just get to my agenda, and then we
+3
that There we go. All right, hi, everyone. Can folks that are in the virtual room, can you just do like a thumbs up or something in the chat? If you can hear please, okay, thumbs up, yay. Awesome. All right. Let me just get to my agenda, and then we 
Unknown Speaker
will get started.
Brittany Claridge - SES PTA President
Welcome everyone. Thank you all so much for being here. This is a awesome turnout, so we're really excited to have you here. I actually will. I'm just going to ask, I'm going to spring this on the board, but just ask everybody really quickly to introduce or we can go around to everyone that might be yes, introduce yourself if you're a board member, just your position. And maybe if you want to talk about, share what students you have here. So I'm Brittany Claridge. I serve as a PTA president, and I have a second grader and a fourth grader.
Maura Kovaic
I'm Maura Kovacic. I'm the VP of membership on the board, and I've got a kindergarten and third grader. Hi, my name is Andrew messenger of kindergarten.
Amanda Shubert
I'm Amanda. I help with communications on the board,
Maura Kovaic
and I have a kindergartner, a third grader and a fourth grader. Hi, my name is Helen lesler. I am not a board member. I have a third grader and a seventh grader at Darwin.
Kilee Kadrie Weiler
Hi, I'm Kristen. I'm new to Stoneleigh this year, and I have a first grader and a fourth grader.
Speaker 3
I'm Josh Jones. I have a kindergartner and a third grader. McKenna Barton, MVP program. I have a second grader and a little one will be in kindergarten
Brittany Claridge - SES PTA President
next year, Megan.
Megan Hata
I'm Megan Hata, and we have a third grader and a fifth grader.
Kerri Cohen
I'm Kerri Cohen. I'm the treasurer this year and the head of the DEI committee. And I have a kindergartner and a third grader. Hi, I'm Angie Henry.
Deidre Lynch
I'm one of the assistant principals here. Hi, I'm Deidre Lynch, and I'm the new principal.
Heather Larson
I'm Heather Larson, and I want an assistant principal.
Kilee Kadrie Weiler
I'm Kylie Deidre Weiler, and I have not on the board, but I have a second grader and a fourth grader.
Kara Musci
I'm Kara Musci, and I am VP of VP of volunteers. I have a kindergartner, a second grader, a fourth grader, and a one girl.
Speaker 1
I'm Elliot Rao and new to Stoneleigh with a kindergartner,
Jordan McLean
Jordan McLean. I've got two kindergartners, twins.
Valerie Johnson
I'm Valerie Johnson. I have a second grader and a third grader. Lauren burnleigh, I have a first grader and a fourth grader,
Brittany Claridge - SES PTA President
great, and then I'm just going to read names online. I think that might be easiest. We have Ashly, Christy, Aaron Hillary, Lauren Melissa Molly, Peyton, Rachel Robbie and Casey. So welcome folks in the room and online. We're really glad to have you here. We are actually going to start by turning it over to you. I'm going to lynch for a PTA or a school.
Deidre Lynch
So I'm really happy you all are here. Thanks for coming out to support obviously, the PTA, who has been fabulous since I got here on June 2. So I've been here a couple months, but we have had a great first three weeks of school. The students have been fabulous, doing working with us to make sure so
Deidre Lynch
this students have been wonderful. Teachers have really been working hard making sure we're greeting students at the door, monitoring. I don't know if friends have told you only two friends are going at it another time to use the restroom, one of the privileges of being here for the last two weeks of school, I really took a look at kind of safety and security students were being dismissed appropriately that we were really monitoring the comings and goings. So one of the changes we did make this year is first grade is being dismissed from the side door as well, so they're not all just kind of dispersing out into the bus loop. We've also changed a couple things about bus dismissal and play centers so that things are a little more orderly, as orderly as you can see when you're dispensing 600
Unknown Speaker
so it's always a work in progress.
Deidre Lynch
So we've also had two fabulous back to school nights, at least from our vantage point. They were fabulous. So we had a really nice turnout. We had about 57% of students represented at the back to school. So that is pretty nice turnout for a school of six. So certainly, I'm sure Brittany has shared with you, we're open to suggestions and supports. We are going to be funneling probably a few more of the emails through ms Claridge, just so that I don't drop anybody if I'm not responding to you, it's not because I don't want to. It's because it's getting lost in my I think I'm doing pretty good. I'm going to give myself a 99% and then I'm going to have turn things over to Miss Larson. We just want to tell you a little bit about the star assessment that Baltimore County has adopted, has replaced the MCAT, the math assessment. But we just want to give you kind of a little brief overview of a couple minutes, just to let you know what your students will be experiencing. And as you're probably aware, Baltimore County is a list of one to one devices. We're at about 67% devices in the school. So that's something that grade levels are managing and supporting, is that all students are doing their grade level assessments, and we're doing the screener through stars. So Ms Larson is going to take over for a few minutes as the testing coordinator.
Brittany Claridge - SES PTA President
So brief update too. So if your students were in grades three, four or five last year, the MCAT results are coming in and cares reports are in the process of being shipped to schools, so once those arrive, we will be sending those home with students with a cover letter attached, and we'll make sure we send a school messenger so you know the date to look for them in your child's folders. And then Miss Lynch was saying about the star assessment. So that assessment is replacing the map assessment. It will be given to students three times a year, the fall, the winter and the spring. And it is comprised of four assessments. Each grade level takes two to three, depending on the grade level. So we have a STAAR early literacy assessment, which is given students in grades K to two, the star reading assessment is then given students in grades three to five, Star math assessment, which is given students in K to five. And then there is something called Star PDM, which is administered one on one by the teacher to students in grades K to three, and that will be used to progress monitor growth throughout the school year. So in the month of September, is the fall window, window for assessment. It closes Friday, September 26 so we started testing here yesterday. We do have a schedule by grade level to make sure that we can share computers and make sure everyone gets tested in that window. Your is computer adaptive. The students will take it on their computer. Many of the students will wear headphones, especially our k2 students, because that assessment is read aloud to them. It takes about 10 to 15 minutes per sitting. So 1510, to 15 for math and 10 to 15 for reading. I question, that's our cart. You talked about that with one on one. What is that reading? Or is that? Yes? Good question. It's for reading. So it's like some probes like letter naming, if they can blend CBC words when you get older, encoding and their ability to read short passages. Any
Unknown Speaker
other questions?
Brittany Claridge - SES PTA President
Okay, thank you, awesome. We appreciate you all being here too. Moving on to the next set of updates in our agenda, I'm going to ask Laura for an update on membership.
Maura Kovaic
Yeah, 
so we're in full swing of gathering new members for this school year. We started using give footer last year, and there was an option last year to do an annual recurring donation, which has been great, or one time. And so we have a lot of members who already signed up last year in recurring. We're at 46% of the whole student and staff represented by a PTA member, which is really great. Our goal is 50, so we're still trying to push there. We've been. The way we're pushing this out is through, well, we did a take home flyer. We've been pushing it out through social media avenues, and we did a school messenger. Thank you. We'll continue to push out to try and reach that 50% we have some incentives. We have we have a class prize. We're doing
+1
so we're in full swing of gathering new members for this school year. We started using give footer last year, and there was an option last year to do an annual recurring donation, which has been great, or one time. And so we have a lot of members who already signed up last year in recurring. We're at 46% of the whole student and staff represented by a PTA member, which is really great. Our goal is 50, so we're still trying to push there. We've been. The way we're pushing this out is through, well, we did a take home flyer. We've been pushing it out through social media avenues, and we did a school messenger. Thank you. We'll continue to push out to try and reach that 50% we have some incentives. We have we have a class prize. We're doing Unknown Speaker
a recess kit, like a
Maura Kovaic
classroom 
recess gift basket of some sort. We haven't exactly figured out what's it. It'll be really cool. Yeah. It'll be excellent, yeah. So that'll be for our first prize, and then second prize, we'll get some Chick fil A, which is great, right now, we have Miss Schindler in the lead, with 75% of her class representing.
+1
recess gift basket of some sort. We haven't exactly figured out what's it. It'll be really cool. Yeah. It'll be excellent, yeah. So that'll be for our first prize, and then second prize, we'll get some Chick fil A, which is great, right now, we have Miss Schindler in the lead, with 75% of her class representing. Speaker 4
She will call people, and then we just had some
Maura Kovaic
changes. Mr. Bump down to third and miss. So we'll be sending out some leaderboard over the next like week or two, but our membership drive ends at the end of the month, and then we'll tally up our results and send out our prizes. One of the other things we changed this year for membership is we're giving free membership for all our teachers and staff so they can get connected into the PTA. One other thing actually, as far as incentives go, we're trying to use our membership. If you join our membership, you get access to our communications 
to lessen the load on the school staff, to email out on our behalf. We used to send out everything through school messenger or through the room bodies, and now we're looking to just send it through give butter, which is our system for signing up for membership. We'll also send out lots of different types of communications, through gives butter, but we'll have PTA newsletters, just reminders on different events, volunteer opportunities, all that good stuff.
+1
to lessen the load on the school staff, to email out on our behalf. We used to send out everything through school messenger or through the room bodies, and now we're looking to just send it through give butter, which is our system for signing up for membership. We'll also send out lots of different types of communications, through gives butter, but we'll have PTA newsletters, just reminders on different events, volunteer opportunities, all that good stuff. Kilee Kadrie Weiler
Can I talk about fee free? Just
Brittany Claridge - SES PTA President
a barrier? Yeah.
Maura Kovaic
So we do have two options for joining. We have a membership with a donation or a membership without a donation. You can access both options on our give butter landing page, which Brittany showing here at the bottom of this page, you'll have to click read more, and then you can access that link. But I've also sent the link out to a Google form, so
Unknown Speaker
yeah, this is our way
Maura Kovaic
of making sure that everybody gives us their email address so that we can communicate to them, regardless of the donation, we'd love a donation, but we also want you to get our communication.
Brittany Claridge - SES PTA President
Yeah, thank you. Any questions about membership? And the link is give, it's in the agenda, but it's give butter.com/ses, PTA, 25 so hopefully it's pretty easy to remember.
Unknown Speaker
It's also on my Instagram.
Unknown Speaker
Thank you. There isn't a directory anymore.
Brittany Claridge - SES PTA President
There is not so it'll be we're actually going to talk about a directory action of the board tonight that got shared with us earlier this week. I guess it was last week. Maybe you we will have and we'll talk about this in a minute room, buddy. They'll be doing directories for their classrooms, but not school wide. Yeah, yeah. The next thing I wanted to share, and I'll see if I can get it up on the screen.
Brittany Claridge - SES PTA President
Here is the let's see
Maura Kovaic
if I can share
Brittany Claridge - SES PTA President
my let me share it, but we have paper copies and have put on our socials, and then we'll email out in our next series of updates. Calendar for 2025 for fall and winter. So that's going to include information on all of the school programs. So you'll see things in there, like school photos, dates that the school is closed. But then you're also going to see information about PTA events. So things like our PTA meetings are happening regularly. Our Trump retreat events is on October 24 so I'd encourage you all take a look at that. We would love to continue to see we have, I think, our largest turnout jumping ahead a bit, but I've been social this year than we've had in many years past, and so we're excited about that, and hope that we can keep getting folks to join us. Any questions about the schedule?
Unknown Speaker
I you.
Brittany Claridge - SES PTA President
You're welcome. All right,
Unknown Speaker
I lost my agenda.
Maura Kovaic
I've got too many things open.
Brittany Claridge - SES PTA President
Okay, next, can you talk about volunteers? Thank you. You want me to do my read from everybody? Sure, yeah, and then maybe just let folks do something
Speaker 3
another 
round, yeah. So now that the school year has really, you know, started, and membership has gotten going, I was hesitant to send out a volunteer form at the very beginning of the year. Everyone's overwhelmed. Sports are starting, school is starting. So what we decided was once everything kind of calmed down, and I think it's probably best to wait until the end of September, maybe a little bit before and then through give butter, we will send out, you know, just a volunteer email. It will explain, you know, why we need volunteers, and you know what volunteers can do. It's only things like that. And it will have a link to a form, and we just ask that you fill out. What interests you do? You love art. Maybe you can help with the art show. You know different things like that. So basically, if you're interested in helping with the book fair for the month of March, you know it's a week in March, but like, you know that you'll be available, you put yourself down for that. And it's not like you have to do it. It's more like, then I'll contact you at that point and say, Hey, are you interested? So last year for cultural celebration, right? Carrie, I had a couple people, and so I sent her the emails of the people who said they were interested in the cultural celebration, and then we can reach out to those people and see how they're willing to help. So that is just going to be a simple form that hopefully members will fill out. And then, you know, just so that we can connect with you a little bit more than just sending out our typical sign up genius for different slots, for different events, um, what else? Oh, so it will ask you if you might be in, like, certain committees. It will ask you if you're interested in certain programs or maybe just a specific event, or, like I said, something that you're just interested in and you feel you could bring to the PTA and help out in that capacity. For room buddies, they are a little bit different. This year. They focus on serving as a resource for the classroom teacher. I mean, that's always been, you know, the purpose of a room buddy. But instead of room buddies sending out PTA emails with all the information, we're going to limit that this year, and it will be more of a like, you know, contact information sharing, like we talked about with the directory, which I'll go into in a little bit classroom specific communication, things that the teacher wants to get out for the class, class parties, which will be in the fall, winter and spring, just things like that. We're going to streamline everything through give butter and then school messenger for the school wide, you know, type thing, the classroom directory. Something that I've done since my son, who's in fourth grade, was in kindergarten, is basically a Google spreadsheet. It's private to just the people that are in the classroom, but you let them know, Hey, I'm going to share this. You can put your information down, but people are going to see it. So if you don't want your information there, that's totally fine. And I've had people email me and say, I still want the information, but I don't want to be on the directory, totally fine. So I would just add them when I sent my emails, but it's a great resource for play dates, for birthday parties, you know? And then for me, I would just go in, copy the columns of parent emails and send my room buddy email. Super simple. People go in, add themselves. It's just like a nice, easy way to communicate, and kind of like a directory, but for your own classroom, yes, anything else I'm missing for room buddies, you think of anything? No, so the
+2
round, yeah. So now that the school year has really, you know, started, and membership has gotten going, I was hesitant to send out a volunteer form at the very beginning of the year. Everyone's overwhelmed. Sports are starting, school is starting. So what we decided was once everything kind of calmed down, and I think it's probably best to wait until the end of September, maybe a little bit before and then through give butter, we will send out, you know, just a volunteer email. It will explain, you know, why we need volunteers, and you know what volunteers can do. It's only things like that. And it will have a link to a form, and we just ask that you fill out. What interests you do? You love art. Maybe you can help with the art show. You know different things like that. So basically, if you're interested in helping with the book fair for the month of March, you know it's a week in March, but like, you know that you'll be available, you put yourself down for that. And it's not like you have to do it. It's more like, then I'll contact you at that point and say, Hey, are you interested? So last year for cultural celebration, right? Carrie, I had a couple people, and so I sent her the emails of the people who said they were interested in the cultural celebration, and then we can reach out to those people and see how they're willing to help. So that is just going to be a simple form that hopefully members will fill out. And then, you know, just so that we can connect with you a little bit more than just sending out our typical sign up genius for different slots, for different events, um, what else? Oh, so it will ask you if you might be in, like, certain committees. It will ask you if you're interested in certain programs or maybe just a specific event, or, like I said, something that you're just interested in and you feel you could bring to the PTA and help out in that capacity. For room buddies, they are a little bit different. This year. They focus on serving as a resource for the classroom teacher. I mean, that's always been, you know, the purpose of a room buddy. But instead of room buddies sending out PTA emails with all the information, we're going to limit that this year, and it will be more of a like, you know, contact information sharing, like we talked about with the directory, which I'll go into in a little bit classroom specific communication, things that the teacher wants to get out for the class, class parties, which will be in the fall, winter and spring, just things like that. We're going to streamline everything through give butter and then school messenger for the school wide, you know, type thing, the classroom directory. Something that I've done since my son, who's in fourth grade, was in kindergarten, is basically a Google spreadsheet. It's private to just the people that are in the classroom, but you let them know, Hey, I'm going to share this. You can put your information down, but people are going to see it. So if you don't want your information there, that's totally fine. And I've had people email me and say, I still want the information, but I don't want to be on the directory, totally fine. So I would just add them when I sent my emails, but it's a great resource for play dates, for birthday parties, you know? And then for me, I would just go in, copy the columns of parent emails and send my room buddy email. Super simple. People go in, add themselves. It's just like a nice, easy way to communicate, and kind of like a directory, but for your own classroom, yes, anything else I'm missing for room buddies, you think of anything? No, so the Speaker 5
room buddy usually go through that too. But future, what teacher gifts? Oh, yeah,
Speaker 3
but I did ask Miss Lynch to send out the room buddy spreadsheet to the teachers, and a lot of them have already filled it out. They already have room buddies. There's a column there that says, Would you like the PTA to help you find one, you know? So some say no, some say yes. A lot of them are filled in already, which is great. We might be reaching out to people in those specific classrooms that have asked help for help finding a room buddy. But then once I have all of those, I will send out that email with, I mean, I have a ton of templates, you know, welcome emails to the class. I can share those, and then just how I set up the classroom directory, and if that room buddy wants to use it, great. You know, you kind of do your own thing, and then you kind of get the ball rolling with your classroom. And that's really it. We need volunteers all the time.
Maura Kovaic
Once I will be
Speaker 3
contacting you, yes, and do you want me to now we
Kara Musci
have lunch from volunteers. Yeah, I love to be in the school when I can, especially I was in Minnesota all summer, and that last that week, we all know, was the tragedy that hit Minnesota the same week school started. So it really is such a comfort city to be able to come in and volunteer in some capacity, especially those days after those tragic things happen in the United States, I'm like, Oh, yay, I get to go be with my kids for an hour or two in the lunchroom. So that said, I just manage a sign of genius for the lunchroom. I have flyers, but maybe we wait so well we can decide when we close out, but fires to go home, and there's just a lot of flexibility in terms of, once you finish your each year, doing the volunteer through, yeah, the Thank you. The volunteer training has to be done each year. Each year, there's some new facets. So as long as you do that volunteer paperwork, ideally 10 days in advance, then you should be cleared to bring your certificate in and check in at the front office, get, get a badge and come and work in the lecture, which is mostly just being tied to your kids helping like Tables,
Speaker 6
yeah, certainly not facilities opens a lot of the
Speaker 3
they're excited to see you, especially even if it's not your kid, you know, like, Oh, you're so and so's mom or dad, you know? Yeah, it is nice to be able to get
Speaker 4
online training. It only takes 15 minutes, right? Yeah, yes, right.
Speaker 3
It's true. Yeah. And and yeah, that's the other thing too. You know, if you have any questions, VP volunteers, that's only pta.org, that's my email. I had someone say that she wanted to volunteer in the lunchroom. I said, you know, make sure you do your volunteer paperwork again. And she submitted it and did it and is ready to sign up. So it's super easy and simple, if you have a question, we're happy to answer it, and you know, point you in the right direction, because we would love to have you. And the
Maura Kovaic
lunch when you volunteer is one hour time clock.
Maura Kovaic
Yes, hours of each grade lunch are on there. So if you know you want to be there for your first graders lunch, you'll, you'll overlap with another grade, but you know which hour to pick, you know, and to sign up for. And then, you know, sometimes you get to see other grades and other friends and things like
Kara Musci
that. So and there's flexibility, and if you need to leave early or go late, we're not accepting you. You know, if you I've often gone and just stayed the full lunch two and a half lunch hours, you know. So if you you know, there's a lot of flexibility in it, and even if all the slots are full, I still stay on the sheet. Please still come in. Yeah? And if the time
Maura Kovaic
is full and they're not there alone, there are other staff there also doing the same work. You're just an extra set of hands doing the same thing.
Kara Musci
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Maura Kovaic
And maybe
Speaker 3
this isn't a, I don't know how we feel about this. There's sometimes. There wasn't. I mean, you started the sign up genius, like, kind of, maybe later last year, but for a while I was going in, you know, I was going in without signing up for a while, I don't, I mean, we encourage sign ups, but you know, if you're working, you know, if you work from home or something, and you're like, Oh, I'm free, like, at lunchtime, you know, I don't know if you guys will deny people if they don't use the signup. Genius, no, you know, keeping track of signup geniuses, and like, you know, it feels like a lot. You know, commitment, but if you just like, you know, happen to be free for like that hour, you know, and you can just go over really quickly. They, they won't deny you
Kara Musci
for lunch, right? And even family. We've had a mom who had family visiting from out of town, and she forwarded them to BCPS volunteer sheet so that they could come and volunteer with the kids and see them in the school lunch room, which I just love that idea, you know, if they've gone through the training to grandma to come in and help, or grandpa to come in and help. It was really a delight, too. So it doesn't just have to be on parents to come help the kids with family, too.
Brittany Claridge - SES PTA President
Thank you. Yeah, and I always recommend to any families I know. I heard this at both of my kids Doctor school nights, but that volunteer training is needed if you're going to come in for a class party, if you're going to come in to be mystery reader,
Unknown Speaker
if they can just have it.
Unknown Speaker
Yeah, you don't get stuff
Speaker 3
when you have to, you know. Just do it, get it into the year and just be done.
Brittany Claridge - SES PTA President
Yes, any, any of the things that you would be coming into the building for, you're going to need to have completed that. And so I recommend, if you plan to be on in the building at any point in time during the school day, to just get that out of the way. All right, thank you. We are going to move on to our budget review. So do you
Maura Kovaic
want me to pull up the budget itself? Yes, great, and then send them to is that, if you have the agenda, either the virtual one or the physical copy, here on the back of it is a list of all the committees in the PTA, little description of what they do and then who the chair is at their email. So if you don't want to wait the month to get more information, you're like, I already know what I want to do. Fabulous. Like, reach out. You can get you plugged in right away. You don't have to have your BCPS, like volunteer training done in order to help on the committees. It's just come into the school. So we've still got plenty of time handle that and just jump right in with us. Every year, we need a quorum of the PTA to approve our budget.
Unknown Speaker
Everybody.
Maura Kovaic
Overview 
of the budget is that we are aiming for basically a zero balance budget. So we want to spend what we bring in, only bring in, I feel only bringing what we need to spend, and only spend what we're bringing. So let's not overspend, etc. It did a little hard in the past, because we're currently sitting on a good chunk of change in our savings account. We're working to send that down overnight. So that started last year, actually, before two years ago, we started by basically making some big donations to the school. The first one was a bunch of library books. This one needs more. Don't be wrong. Look around this little energy box, but we did a lot. We did a very good job. Last year, Mr. S, Mr. Came to us with the proposal to upgrade the audio visual equipment that they used for announcements and all the other media stuff that they did with the kids. And so we did that last year. Basically we settled on is that every year we're leaving a capital expense line item for $8,000 and we're going to be asking the teachers and staff to basically, if 
there's something that you're looking at doing that's kind of a big ask, like put together a proposal, come talk to the PTA, like we're going to fund something, like we got to send it. So let's, let's do it. That's where you feel that that's for otherwise, just a pretty standard budget sheet, right? We've got income on one side. We've got the expenses on other. Try to line up as best as we could. I try to make it a little more clear so which things are which and where they're coming from, what they're for. So like, you'll see, like, we get a lot of money in Derby sponsorship, like, from all the different businesses, even the individuals that decide yes, we're going to get money out of school, we're doing it through the Stoneleigh derby. Awesome. There is some expenses to the Derby, but that's minimal compared to what we're we're bringing in. Anyway, if there any questions in the budget, I can answer them. Otherwise, we did a lot of work on it. Was a board. I'm pretty happy with it compared to where things were last year. We basically, I went through, I increased, we increased some things that people clearly needed more funding to, like, get done. But then also, we're really working really hard this year to buckle down, and we're not going to be sending past our approved amount.
+2
of the budget is that we are aiming for basically a zero balance budget. So we want to spend what we bring in, only bring in, I feel only bringing what we need to spend, and only spend what we're bringing. So let's not overspend, etc. It did a little hard in the past, because we're currently sitting on a good chunk of change in our savings account. We're working to send that down overnight. So that started last year, actually, before two years ago, we started by basically making some big donations to the school. The first one was a bunch of library books. This one needs more. Don't be wrong. Look around this little energy box, but we did a lot. We did a very good job. Last year, Mr. S, Mr. Came to us with the proposal to upgrade the audio visual equipment that they used for announcements and all the other media stuff that they did with the kids. And so we did that last year. Basically we settled on is that every year we're leaving a capital expense line item for $8,000 and we're going to be asking the teachers and staff to basically, if +3
there's something that you're looking at doing that's kind of a big ask, like put together a proposal, come talk to the PTA, like we're going to fund something, like we got to send it. So let's, let's do it. That's where you feel that that's for otherwise, just a pretty standard budget sheet, right? We've got income on one side. We've got the expenses on other. Try to line up as best as we could. I try to make it a little more clear so which things are which and where they're coming from, what they're for. So like, you'll see, like, we get a lot of money in Derby sponsorship, like, from all the different businesses, even the individuals that decide yes, we're going to get money out of school, we're doing it through the Stoneleigh derby. Awesome. There is some expenses to the Derby, but that's minimal compared to what we're we're bringing in. Anyway, if there any questions in the budget, I can answer them. Otherwise, we did a lot of work on it. Was a board. I'm pretty happy with it compared to where things were last year. We basically, I went through, I increased, we increased some things that people clearly needed more funding to, like, get done. But then also, we're really working really hard this year to buckle down, and we're not going to be sending past our approved amount. 
Brittany Claridge - SES PTA President
I 
do want to mention one thing that if you're looking at this and you're a little confused about the Scholastic Book Fair is really weird. We essentially have to bring in. We bring in this we bring in a bunch of cash, and then we owe some of the cash back to right, and then it comes into the PTA account, and then we pay some of the cash back to Scholastic for the difference in the books, and then we pay the rest of the difference to or give it to the library as A credit, and they can purchase
+1
do want to mention one thing that if you're looking at this and you're a little confused about the Scholastic Book Fair is really weird. We essentially have to bring in. We bring in this we bring in a bunch of cash, and then we owe some of the cash back to right, and then it comes into the PTA account, and then we pay some of the cash back to Scholastic for the difference in the books, and then we pay the rest of the difference to or give it to the library as A credit, and they can purchase Speaker 3
so it like, looks like we're spending, looks like we're spending a lot of money. That like. So we get a bunch of cash, and then we get the credit card right. They keep all the credit card transactions, obviously. And then we have to put the money in the bank, write them a check, and we keep the difference right. So we keep the difference in our bank account of what we've, what we did keep, what we profit. So, yeah, it's very strange, because it looks like we spend all this money on the book fair. But no, it's actually a fundraiser. We make a lot of money, and then we just have to, you know, pay them back, and then pay the library account,
Brittany Claridge - SES PTA President
like $50 last year. So
Unknown Speaker
yeah, and it
Brittany Claridge - SES PTA President
usually makes, how much did we end up writing a check for for
Unknown Speaker
six or seven, I
Brittany Claridge - SES PTA President
want to say seven and eight, we have a higher year
Speaker 3
last year. Yes, we had a really great year. Last year, the Fair was very successful. So, you know, obviously, the more successful we are in our sales, the more money we get to put towards the library. So it was great.
Brittany Claridge - SES PTA President
That's the one I wanted to point out. I think it looks confusing, and I'm glad we're
Unknown Speaker
getting family. Yes,
Maura Kovaic
every year. Oh, yeah, that's a new new line item. Really, you cannot just throw them in a washing machine
Speaker 3
some parts time. Us about some spray that they used for the chick lake house, and we'll definitely purchase that, but he needs a lot more than a beast.
Maura Kovaic
Hey, a really nice and thickest fan. And we're asking for other parents to volunteer. It's fun.
Speaker 3
Parent 
that has volunteered. It's hard, right? So we have our teacher who helps us out, and then there's morning announcements, and he helps with those too, and it's just a lot in the morning. Or, you know, maybe a teacher that does kiss and go line, and they can't be there for that. So if we could get parents to volunteer for that, I know we've had PTA presidents that have done it,
+1
that has volunteered. It's hard, right? So we have our teacher who helps us out, and then there's morning announcements, and he helps with those too, and it's just a lot in the morning. Or, you know, maybe a teacher that does kiss and go line, and they can't be there for that. So if we could get parents to volunteer for that, I know we've had PTA presidents that have done it, Brittany Claridge - SES PTA President
Daney, Adam, Melissa,
Speaker 3
you know, and some parents that have done it, if you're interested, you're always looking. We'll say we have to
Speaker 7
talk about the process and mail it in.
Brittany Claridge - SES PTA President
No anybody wants the dry cleaner, gorgeous
Maura Kovaic
discussion,
Unknown Speaker
just kind of projection
Unknown Speaker
prior years.
Brittany Claridge - SES PTA President
So we essentially take what was last year's budget. Look at what we spend.
Maura Kovaic
I looked at the faculty unit, because the last treasurer started two years ago, did a lot of cleanup when it came to PTA finances, and so was able to look at both all the financials in the last two years and basically get an idea of, like, what are we actually spending? What's coming in? Like, what do we think is going to work out in terms of, like, Derby, Brittany later, but derby is already well underway. Like, we've already hit our goal for corporate sponsorship. So, like that number
Kilee Kadrie Weiler
yesterday, she was like, got this one
Brittany Claridge - SES PTA President
Amanda made, like, $3,000 Did that answer your question? Okay, yeah, yeah. And we asked, I know you'll talk about this, but we ask, essentially, the committee chairs to stay within those budget lines. If we need an overspend for something, then the processes that will take a meeting in order to increase the budget line for something. And we do have a couple you'll see on there that are kind of generic administrative expenses. Those are things like storage bins. Or, you know, I just ordered a thing of science, and so the PTA tags, they all sell over at the ice cream social. So there's a couple that are generic, but primarily they're targeted towards a specific program. Or them
Maura Kovaic
any other questions to your question, though? Well, addendum, something that's going to come later in the year, but I my goal triggers kind of change our questioning process a little bit. I pull it earlier for to figure out what, the more exactly when, but we're going to be looking at the committee chairs and leads, and then the spring time, essentially, like, what have you spent? Like, what are we thinking about for next year? For planning wise and like getting, you know, their input directly from what they've been experiencing the school year to build the budget shop for the next year. Yeah, it's hard when you do it like, get the transition between leads and new people come in and all that. It's kind of a haywire activity. This year might be a little bit of like a crunch, but we kind of switched up around a little bit. But yeah, yeah, do we happen to know what our capital expense for this year might be?
Brittany Claridge - SES PTA President
Okay? We have a
Maura Kovaic
couple of ideas floating. Are you okay if I share a couple
Brittany Claridge - SES PTA President
of we so I had asked that question at the beginning of the year ms Lynch, and we were talking about a really nice, large welcome mat in the front of the school that says, like, welcome so many stallions, just to bring a little color and like fun to the entryway. We had talked about a poster machine, because that one is current the poster printing machine here is currently broken. There was something else you told me, and I'm forgetting,
Kilee Kadrie Weiler
and I do have a quote, oh, great,
Brittany Claridge - SES PTA President
awesome. So it looks like this year might actually be a series of, like a couple little, I would say small, but they're like 1000 $1,200 but not one large guess, like we said
Maura Kovaic
before, other things, like our bulletin board Id on my phone. Yes, we'll vote on those on a regular basis. Is there a formal process? Is there a formal
Brittany Claridge - SES PTA President
process for teachers to apply for, like grants from the PTA, or is it just sort of a like, good question, so we will do it 100 or $100 of reimbursement to the teachers. For any are you asking for the capital expense process? So we do give every PTA member $100 essentially reimbursement.
Brittany Claridge - SES PTA President
Anyone who has a classroom essentially, not just homeroom teachers, but also come special area teachers, if they wanted it. So they will get, and they're a member of the PTA, which, again, we decided as a board to make free this year to them, they will get, they can qualify for $100 reimbursement so that can be spent on whatever they need for their classroom. And then, essentially, usually, all of the other sort of formal write up requests have just come through admin, and they've come with an idea to the admin, and then they ask if they can put them on our agenda, and then they present to the PTA, and then we eventually vote on that.
Maura Kovaic
So it's not super formal,
Brittany Claridge - SES PTA President
but I mean, we've had everything from, like, a couple teachers who were like, We need 300 bucks to do the theater club startup cost last year, which was great, and then they made money. Like we have a plan to make money and use that money the next year to buy the things we need all the way up to think the biggest one we had was the well, both the book, the book for 14,000 and the AV equipment was 13. So those were kind of more comprehensive. Brigid, go ahead, hi.
Speaker 8
Quick 
question about that capital stuff. I know that as a parent of a fourth and first grader, I've walked into several classrooms, and when there is a nice classroom rug, you make notice of it. And when there is not, you also make notice of that and so, and I also know they're very expensive, those Lakeshore like colored rugs that are, I think, in maybe every classroom in the school. But as we were talking about sort of a welcome rug, I was also just thinking about an audit of like which have seen better days and which are feeling fresh. Yeah.
+1
question about that capital stuff. I know that as a parent of a fourth and first grader, I've walked into several classrooms, and when there is a nice classroom rug, you make notice of it. And when there is not, you also make notice of that and so, and I also know they're very expensive, those Lakeshore like colored rugs that are, I think, in maybe every classroom in the school. But as we were talking about sort of a welcome rug, I was also just thinking about an audit of like which have seen better days and which are feeling fresh. Yeah. Brittany Claridge - SES PTA President
Love that. Thank you. We can take a look at that and talk about if there's like some or any other, I think maybe, Brigid, to your point, some other classroom equipment too, but the runs are great, a great focal point.
Maura Kovaic
One On another note, related to individual classrooms. I've noticed in our kindergarten classrooms, we have a lot of English as a second language, or not yet English as a second language, they don't speak English at all. And I'm wondering if we have any like devices available to our teachers to be able to speak to those kids I know, Miss G has been using an app on her phone, and it's not like the best. And she has told me that other teachers in other schools, who have a lot of larger population of English, have these black boxes. I don't know what they're called,
Kilee Kadrie Weiler
but some sort of like device. She calls
Unknown Speaker
it a black box. I don't know
Maura Kovaic
what I know. She said, Those are expensive. And I said, Well, you know, the PTA has some money if we want to, like, suggest that as an option too. I don't know how many non English speaking children we have in the school now,
Speaker 6
but so we would, so thank you
Deidre Lynch
for that. I we would have to go through the ELD office, because historically, and I'm just speaking off the top of my head now, that has not been a recommendation, because you really want to do immersion, yeah. So we would have to
Deidre Lynch
clear that through the ELD office. And we do have a fabulous
Deidre Lynch
teacher here that I can talk to, but historically, that has not been the messaging. So I would have to investigate that
Maura Kovaic
I could just imagine it being so hard. I know immersion is important, but it must be so hard for the teachers to not only teach the 20 somewhat children who speak English, but also deal with multiple kids in one classes who don't speak English,
Speaker 3
and she doesn't speak Spanish, or whatever that means. I run into the arts and the cafeteria, I can't I have to get other other kids volunteer to translate.
Brittany Claridge - SES PTA President
I both love our discussion, and I want to be conscious of everybody's time too. So if there are there any other questions about budget this point, okay, then I am going to ask that we or do you want to put on for those your budget? Go ahead.
Brittany Claridge - SES PTA President
No. Yeah, we're gonna do a vote.
Maura Kovaic
Do you want to know we raise their hand? Sure, yeah. So we're so quick, like hand showing vote. So if you approve the budget for the 2025 26 school year as shown, understanding that, like any changes will be presented in a PTA meeting and then voted on for approval. Then you agree.
Brittany Claridge - SES PTA President
No, anybody, anyone who doesn't pay member or a member. Yes, any nine, any
Maura Kovaic
again,
Brittany Claridge - SES PTA President
and then I have this side,
Maura Kovaic
if 
you want to talk through Yeah real quick, because I can send this out so they'll come also at some point to the committee leads. In an email this year I put together for each of the different committees or program leads for spending money, these expense tracking spreadsheets in our Google Drive. So we're going to put everything in there. There's instructions. The calculations will auto calculate for you your approved budget is there was pretty was, you know, maybe approved, but now it is approved. Hanging in there for you, you'll be able to see kind of, throughout the year, basically, where you're at, if you need to be at requesting for money, maybe re looking at what you're doing, making sure that we're actually paying attention to what we're spending when we're spending it. Yes, we can go over that more also at the next training. Now that the budget is approved, I will go through there are some reimbursement requests that have been sitting there, and I will go through those this week and get the checks sent out. And yeah, there's a new option in the online forum, if you'd rather pick up your check in person, because you're home to the meeting, you're going to see me, or you just want to meet up with me, that's fine, I don't have the mail.
+3
you want to talk through Yeah real quick, because I can send this out so they'll come also at some point to the committee leads. In an email this year I put together for each of the different committees or program leads for spending money, these expense tracking spreadsheets in our Google Drive. So we're going to put everything in there. There's instructions. The calculations will auto calculate for you your approved budget is there was pretty was, you know, maybe approved, but now it is approved. Hanging in there for you, you'll be able to see kind of, throughout the year, basically, where you're at, if you need to be at requesting for money, maybe re looking at what you're doing, making sure that we're actually paying attention to what we're spending when we're spending it. Yes, we can go over that more also at the next training. Now that the budget is approved, I will go through there are some reimbursement requests that have been sitting there, and I will go through those this week and get the checks sent out. And yeah, there's a new option in the online forum, if you'd rather pick up your check in person, because you're home to the meeting, you're going to see me, or you just want to meet up with me, that's fine, I don't have the mail. 
Brittany Claridge - SES PTA President
Okay? Thank you. This is linked in the agenda as well, so folks want to check that out, or if you're committee meet, then we can take a look at that. We will run through our committee updates. Kara, do you mind giving a quick update about book fair plans? Just date and super fast. Save the date,
Speaker 3
march 2 through the sixth week. You know, kids shop during their library time. We are also partnering with the reading fair and the art show on March 3. That's 530 to seven. Usually we do, I think, two hours for the book fair, but we will do that again, and it's great because it if there's multiple events going on, obviously more people will come, because it's only a one time thing, and also people will be more spread out. It gets really crowded in here, so it will be nice, you know, some people will be doing different things and they can come in. But, yeah, we're excited, and I will be contacting people to volunteer for,
Unknown Speaker
okay?
Brittany Claridge - SES PTA President
Okay, yeah, yes,
Maura Kovaic
yes. If you would like to join the DEI, diversity, equity, inclusion committee, I am still the chair of that as a committee members, totally fine. Keep riding with it. Well, you don't. I mean, I'm the chair, but we're a very cognitive committee. We all work together. We all help run things and put together stuff. We love new members. We love fresh faces and fresh ideas and just a new perspective. We meet once a month and talk and try and figure out how we can best support the school and students from a diversity and inclusion perspective, and one of those things that I just saw Miss Lynch is email. I'm so excited we're going to be working with her and the admin team to get some information on like indigenous peoples of Maryland, or peoples in general to have up at the school. Because we're actually at school on indigenous people say this year they've got some fun ideas and
Kilee Kadrie Weiler
essentially open to it. So we're very excited.
Brittany Claridge - SES PTA President
Kenna, do you have any enrichment updates
Speaker 3
we will be doing Charles City players this year again. Registration is open already. It went out on social flyers are due to go home early next week. But an update as of an hour ago, we might have to, I might have to come in tomorrow, or at some point, and change the time. It was the start time of 4pm which I did not catch. So it's going to be 345 so and so flyers will be going out for that we're going to do. They're going to do frozen in the fall for the Fall performance, and Shrek in the spring. It'll be on Wednesdays, 345, to 445, if you have a theater child who that sounds interesting too. I am new to this position, but Brittany did, and a couple other board members told me in the past, they had some issues with Charm City players. They did make a lot of upgrades this year. I don't have them at the moment, but they made pretty much listen to everybody's feedback and propose a solution to everybody's pain points. So we're giving them another shot this year. We do feel hopeful that it'll be a better program. It'll be more engaging for the students. One of the changes is a 50 student cap. My understanding was there was too many students last year, so that's good. And then grades two through five, only no younger ones. That was a big pain point. So wanted to highlight those two changes. Registration is open. Like I said, flyers will be going home next week. Maybe we'll do a give butter message too, to get the word out on that program that is different. It's not
Speaker 7
through DRC, it's through, technically the PTA. We work with terms and players to just put this on separately.
Speaker 7
So that's CCP, and then, oh, assembly. I started assembly planning again, somewhat new to this. I've asked the principals for preferences. We will do a social emotional learning one I met with Maura, got a card from art learning, and I met with them this week. They were very, very nice. So I'm going to look at their website. They have a whole like SEL category on their website. Sounds like there's a lot of options. I haven't had time to go through them yet. So if anybody has, you know, ideas for fun assemblies or, you know, please reach out to me. I know not. I don't I know nothing. I'm starting from square one. So it looks like we'll do an arts one. I was thinking maybe a stem one, and then maybe the author reached
Speaker 7
out, who has a student who goes to the schools. Maybe we'll do Bernie again.
Maura Kovaic
It sounds like she doesn't look out. So those are the three that I'm kind of thinking but open to any and all. You. A little plug for McKenna enrichment, historically has had one person handling all of that planning. She needs help. You have to do all the things because I can help with like, one great, fabulous please. That'd be great, yeah. If anybody wants to help, how many assemblies do we look to
Kilee Kadrie Weiler
do? A year three? Oh, fall, winter, spring.
Brittany Claridge - SES PTA President
Any questions about just maybe for this, I'll kind of break things up into three sections, about book fair, about our dei committee or university. I you, I also chair family social, so I'll get the update for this. We really could use help family socials, especially, I would love to have a co chair in that process. And the events are just really big. If you were here for the ice cream social, that's actually the least complicated events that we do of the year. So we do, we were really grateful. We have tons of teachers turn out for that. If you could please just pass our Thank you along. So wonderful, and it's just so fun to see the kids faces light up when their teacher is there and they see a teacher, and then like you're real, and you do fun things besides be my teacher, and it's just really fun. We our estimate is about 800 cooks. We gave out about 1200 popsicles and 800 ice cream cups. I also know that my daughter ate four ice cream cups. That doesn't mean that there were 800 people,
Speaker 5
and I know some other kids did too and so, but that was a solid.
Brittany Claridge - SES PTA President
We do have a trunk or treat on the 24th of October. Two things, we were three things, really, we look for for that event if you're able or interested, and if you know of any local businesses who might be interested in sponsoring. We have sponsorships that are they're monetary sponsorships, but there are some that are just give your money and you don't have to show up. But we also have some some trunk hosting opportunities for financial sponsors as well, and that's really important, because we provide all of the candy. And so I usually buy 25,000 pieces of candy. It's about 1000 pieces of candy per trunk, and you've all bought Halloween candy. It's not cheap. And so that, essentially, the sponsorships cover our ability to cover the candy. If you have a business, or know of someone who does, we would love to have them partner and sponsor with us. We do have a need for families to sponsor a trunk. We will, like I said, provide candy for you. We actually even have trunk decorating kits if you don't have an idea or the time to put one of your own together. I think we got about six or eight of them, but we need folks who are willing to set one up and run the event, and it's usually only for the first one, six hour maybe, so that you can enjoy the end of the event with your kiddos. There's also a blow party and a DJ. And if you've never been to hilarious, watch your
Maura Kovaic
kids in costumes.
Brittany Claridge - SES PTA President
And then the third is just, we usually need a handful of volunteers, so we will send out a sign of genius. We also rely for that event, and are made there heavily on high school volunteers. So if you have a high school, or know of one, we get service hours for that. So it's a great opportunity for them to just come and take advantage of that. And then if you look at the Actually, don't think any of our other ones are on the schedule is sent out now. We do have dates for our art show, like Kara mentioned, but then also for Mayfair in the spring. Morning mile, I don't think Justin's online, but starts next week for those who have new kiddos, morning mile is a chance for kids to run in the morning. I always know they're looking for more parent volunteers who can help essentially log. I've actually never been
Maura Kovaic
so all we can wear like a lanyard with a QR code on it or some sort of barcode thing, and we just need volunteers to stand up like the lap entrance and exit, or go through your lap and scan them, yep, and then again, right? Yeah. They aren't burn charms for X amount of laps per mile.
Brittany Claridge - SES PTA President
And they've got, like, really fun ones for certain holidays, and they'll usually give us an idea of like, when there's a fun one coming up,
Maura Kovaic
it's nice to, like, log your miles. And the kids are like, Oh, look at 100 miles, yeah.
Speaker 4
And if your kid, oh, it's just opt in. So your kids interested in trying it out, they can just show up. There's no they have a registration process. If you get that they wanted that, they just give you. It's only registration that's worth getting. A bad
Maura Kovaic
or if your kid is under the bed and you can't show up, and that's every day, starting next week on the surround Tuesday, and there'll be weather updates on Facebook.
Unknown Speaker
Being day 30, during school, and
Unknown Speaker
it's
Maura Kovaic
not a drop off program.
Speaker 3
Really a great way for the kids to start their day. I feel like you would feel better right after you exercise. And some of
Maura Kovaic
the adults run with the kids, some of the adults just hang out and have coffee with other adults. As long kids are running for fun. What good music happening?
Brittany Claridge - SES PTA President
Okay, a couple other updates we want to share about the Stoneleigh Derby and some of the changes that are happening for that program. So for folks who are new, the family derby is really our flagship fundraiser for the year. As you'll see if you look at the budget, our income from memberships is actually pretty low when you look at overall what we spend, right? So we have about $5,000 that comes in from membership, some other money that comes in from other donations. But essentially, a majority of our funds are coming in through our stone major be fundraising each year because we want to continue to be able to give these larger purchases to the pike, to the school every year, we want to continue to look for revenue sources. And I'll be honest, I don't want to sell popcorn or wrapping paper or 140 pieces. And so our goal is really to concentrate our efforts as a PTA and as a community into one singular fundraiser every year to ask for family participation and help in making that successful events. And then the only other fundraisers we really do throughout the year are restaurant nights, where if you don't feel like making dinner and you want to go grab pizza or raising canes, some of the funds go towards that go towards the PTA. So those are great kind of low lift opportunities for us to make money, but they certainly don't make enough for us to fund what we're doing each year. So we are actually partnering with a company called Boosterthon this year, so the derby will look a little bit different. So there will still be a community event on Sunday the 12th that will be sort of like an expo and shakeout run, so students will have the chance to pick up their backpack packet with their T shirt in it. They'll have music playing. We'll have like, a really nice coffee cart with, like, lattes and cappuccinos and all that fun stuff for purchase. We'll have a raffle that's there, and then they'll do a kind of group stretch and shake out run to prep for the event. The next day, they'll also be some sponsors that are there for that event as well. We are very grateful to our board and to the committee members. We did hit our $15,000 we did get gdmc today, so that was really exciting, as our premier sponsor. So we got right in under the wire. So we've got, I think, like two more sponsors. So we hit 1500 or $15,000 in sponsorship, and then the rest of the funds that you see in that $30,000 is done through essentially a fundraising program. So your kiddos will come home with some information. You can register them. They can ask friends and family for donations. If they get donations, they meet fun challenges. So there's a fundraising challenge for the whole school, there's a participation challenge, there's a 50 state challenge that they can get donations from all 50 states. They get a special prize. And then there are what you would typically expect in a fundraiser, like little individual prizes. So if they had a hunt, if they register, they get a prize. If they hit $50 they get a prize. If they hit $100 they get a prize. And then on Monday the 13th, we will be doing an in school fun run, and that will be the actual Stoneleigh Derby itself. So the booster design team comes in, they help run that event. And again, we'll have some sponsorship opportunities to recognize folks. I think the reasons we like this new model, it does ask for some individual fundraising, but we are hopeful that our that our families, can be successful in that it gives the kids some fun incentive, and it's sort of like an additional assembly, essentially, they'll be taken out for 45 minutes to do that. It gives us a great chance to fundraise. It gives us an extra help. And we get the opportunity to kind of look at this again and again, year over year, as a fundraising model that we build on. And everybody gets to everybody, yes. Thank you nesting. Every student gets to participate. So regardless of whether a student registers, regardless of whether they raise $0 $0 $2,000 they all get to participate. There's options for participation. So if your kids really adamant they don't want to run, there's a cheering section. You'll all gets a t shirt. They all get a t shirt. So everybody walks away. And there's also some fun giveaways that they give out, like a lanyard and some other things throughout the program. So everybody's walking away with something fun. Everybody gets a race packet. So it's just a way for us to involve the entire school community that doesn't require registration, but we do ask for partnership in the fundraising process. Again, our goal is to do one fundraiser and do it well, and then not have to do other ones throughout the year. Feel like I'm missing something on my agenda. Oh yes, yes, sponsors. So if you do own a business, or know someone who does, we can take sponsors through the start of next week. We can actually take them continued. But if you want to be on the shirt, that's our due date for the shirt at the start of next week.
Kara Musci
So please follow up with me and we'll make sure you get that. But any booster questions, do you anticipate that that's
Speaker 9
something that, like, parents can come and watch, like when we had on the weekend? Good question. If not, will there be, like, volunteer opportunities? Will you need parent volunteers for helping run
Brittany Claridge - SES PTA President
it? Yeah, great question. So for this year, the event during the school day, we will not have parent volunteers, because we've not done it before. The sort of ask was, can we just keep it to the folks that are here at Stoneleigh? We will likely need parent volunteers the week before to help with the thing before the day well, the day before, but also the week before, because we're handing out prizes every other day, so we have to take the report of the prize report and pack bags of prizes every other day to hand out to the classes, we have to pack 650, race bags and sort them a classroom, including t shirt custom t shirt sizes, which, if you put your kids t shirt size down on sneak a piece. That why. And so we will have volunteer opportunities at the community event, and there'll be a run, shakeout run during that but not on that Monday event. There might be one or two volunteers we have at that, but it'll probably be the folks that organized it, just because we'll know we'll be on the ground, but booster sends their staff. We're hoping to look at that in years to come, to do something like Field Day, where we could have families come in, but that won't be the case for this year. That sounds
Speaker 9
great, but it's definitely that's going to be a change for people like coming and cheering on and, yes, taking the picture their kids. So yeah,
Maura Kovaic
and that's why we did this Sunday, yeah, yeah,
Brittany Claridge - SES PTA President
because we want still that kind of similar Sunday community experience while also having my fun run on Monday. Great question. Thank you. Make sure I'm not missing anybody in the
Maura Kovaic
chat. Sorry, we look
Brittany Claridge - SES PTA President
for for sponsors like $1 threshold. Yeah, so sponsorship runs between, we have a $400 $1,000 2000 and there's no more three, because I have taken and we do have limited spots for the higher dollar amount one, but there is the $400 one has been really popular, especially like small businesses. So we've got a couple local businesses, and I'm happy if anybody wants it, I have a PDF packet I can send to folks really quickly, too.
Maura Kovaic
Thank you. Okay, do
Brittany Claridge - SES PTA President
Yeah, I'm not ask her if she admit she's not. I don't think she's on here anymore. She was the thing she and I didn't ask her ahead if she wanted to
Unknown Speaker
talk about the breakfast,
Speaker 4
sure, yeah, because you were there real quick breakfast on the teacher's first day, we
Speaker 3
basically just they had a meeting in the gym before they went to their classrooms to work, and so we kind of set up outside of that had breakfast for them. Christy brought something new this year. It was like a yogurt bar, which was pretty popular. It was very nice. And then there was bagels from THC, and we had coffee and orange juice and things like that. So it was, it was nice. And it was nice to see all the teachers, and, you know, for them to chat and stuff before they went into the meetings and got their day started. And then the treat trolley is just basically a cart that we take around the hallways to the teachers. You know, there's different things on it every time, but, like, sometimes. So during Teacher Appreciation Week, it was, what was it? Star themes,
Brittany Claridge - SES PTA President
yeah, like you're
Speaker 3
a star. So it was like movie theater, popcorn and candy, you know, and drinks and stuff like that. So it's always different. But we try each quarter to do that and just kind of surprise the teachers stop by the classrooms and offer them treats, you know, throughout the day, and that's it.
Brittany Claridge - SES PTA President
And Teacher Appreciation Week is usually a five day, five events situation. So if you, if you're a business and are able, especially if you have some kind of food or beverage product or gift card, we usually will collect gift cards during that time to what do you call that Plinko off? They drop a Plinko thing, and then they can get a gift card. And so that's a big production. We have for tons of volunteers and usually an extra set of donations around that time, just to help us make that week really special for our teachers and staff. And that's usually the first week, yeah, yep, yep. I didn't know this, but it's a national date, I found that my first year as PTA, but yes, usually the person each weekend. And I think I know you already did volunteer anything else, but I think that's it. So as and thank you, Terry for for the shout out there. We did link on there and put on top of or put on the back of the agenda. Alyssa just are committee program opportunities if you have time again, these committees need volunteers from, you know, one time commitments, all the way through multi kind of larger projects and opportunities. And they all need help. You'll see a lot of them are the same people that call their names out as people on the board. And so we are looking to try and expand that base so that it's not the same couple of people doing all the things for for the school and the kiddos. So if you have any questions about placement in those I'm always happy to answer those. Karen, can answer those or help you get more information, or you're just not sure. We did try and put a brief description, but
Speaker 6
that only tells you so much. So happy to answer questions.
Maura Kovaic
I know all the leads are happy to answer any questions. Choose an email or Yep, we don't know. We do need out the help, I mean, so I've been here my fourth year solely now, and the majority of these events are huge ice cream social. There was, like, the younger people. There insane amount of people, the people who actually that was bad event, I would say, decent number of volunteers, but the most volunteers that I've seen so far, which, in a while, not enough, but better. But usually what happens is there's like 123, people. It's usually been Brittany, Kara Christy, like doing all the things like, it's not sustainable for them to do so much energy and effort and time, like, we're just not going to be able to do all these big events. We really need a lot of help. So if you're able to volunteer even an hour for an event somewhere, that's awesome. Yeah, thank you all right. Thank you
Brittany Claridge - SES PTA President
everyone. I'm so good to have you all here. Yes, thank you. I'm going to Hang up online. Bye, everyone. You
Unknown Speaker
Nice.