PTO Meeting Minutes

PTO MEETING
January 13, 2010 8:30AM & 7:00PM
MINUTES

Board Members: Ann & John Dignam, Patty Kiernan, Aracely Kuszel, Mary Rendich, Julie Waclawski

Ann Dignam began the meetings with an opening prayer

Principal's Report:

• Re-registration forms will go out this week via e-mail and hard copy
• Our focus should be not only on recruiting new families, but retaining the ones we currently have. Also, if a family comes to you with a serious school issue that needs to be addressed, please bring it to Mr. Keenan.
• A “Canned Food Drive” to support the Parish Food Pantry is beginning on Friday, January 22^nd, as part of our 60^th Anniversary celebration.
• Catholic Schools Week begins on January 31^st. Joanne Kastberg is in charge of the open houses this week. Parents will be available from 9AM to 11AM for school tours and answering questions. Mr. Keenan will speak at all the masses that weekend. Students can come dressed in their uniforms to promote the school. This is also the day that the 7^th graders will attend the 12:00PM Mass in the auditorium as their Confirmation “Rite of Inscription”. They will be asked to wear their uniform to the Mass.
• Whenever we have events, we need to plaster signs everywhere, in and on all of the buildings – so nobody can say that they didn’t know about it.
• A committee will be formed to work on a 60^th birthday party for the school.
• The Golf Outing will include, “To support St. Joseph’s School” on the promotional material, to tell corporate sponsors that their money is going to help the school. Hopefully this will generate more money for us.
• A Legislative Forum is being held once again this year, on Thursday, January 28^th at 7PM. The location is Archbishop Stepinac High School. The purpose of the rally is to shine a spotlight on the unjust and illegal budget decisions made in Albany by lawmakers and the Governor to reduce and cut funds to religious schools that are required by New York State law. We would like a minimum of 10 people representing our school. Students are welcome as well to carry our school banner (in uniform).
• Fundraising is not going to be enough to cover costs in the school. We have to look into other, large scale ideas to offset budget shortfalls.

Fundraising Updates:

Applebee’s: This was a fun morning for all in attendance. We project a profit of about $1200, plus the 50/50 collected $520, paying out $260.

Book Fair: Raised $5,000 in sales over two days. We get about $1200-$1400 of that money. Not a bad amount considering we only had the two full days.

Stop and Shop Card A+ Program: About 110 cards have been registered so far, and we have earned $410. John projects earning $700 by the end of the school year.

Gift Cards: A little over $1,300 has been made through gift cards so far. Roughly 10 or 12 people are providing 90% of these results.

Science Lab Update:

• The checks have all come in. We had $6100 available. We spent about $6050 so far.
• 10 2-student lab desks have been ordered (20 students can sit), as well as equipment. This should arrive in about 2 weeks.
• A demo table (custom built) has been ordered as well; this should arrive in about 6 weeks.
• The Restucci family is donating 6 new light fixtures (with bulbs of all one color) to the room.
• John will be applying for additional grant money in February through Entergy.

Future Events:

Family Fun Night: Deb Wu is heading up this event, where for $5 we will sell popcorn, water and a raffle ticket and we will show a movie geared toward the younger grades, with a possible game room set up for the middle schoolers. The target date for this is March.

Chili's Dinner:

• The Chili’s night is scheduled for Thursday, February 11^th. Chili’s will give us vouchers beforehand to bring in that night, earning St. Joseph’s 10% of all sales associated with the voucher. This is scheduled for Thursday, February 11^th.
• The flyers should be e-mailed to all our students and religious education students, handed out at church, put in the bulletin, handed off to friends, etc.
• Gift Cards could be sold for this event as well.
• Dinner does not have to be purchased; vouchers are valid for drinks at the bar, or just dessert, as well
• It would be nice to have this night be a “no homework/no tests the next day” event so that families could make the time to come.

Clothing Drive: The target date for the next clothing drive is the weekend of June 5^th and 6^th.

Odds and Ends:

• There was talk about having orientation gatherings for new parents, or a “Big Buddy” system where a current St. Joe’s family takes on a new family to be their point of contact for questions/concerns/etc. Also, Mr. Keenan could e-mail the new families all of our current correspondence, unless they choose to opt out of it.
• There was a discussion in the morning meeting about having social events as well as fundraising events, to bring the children together more.
• Spanish was discussed, specifically that having Spanish once a week for 8 years doesn’t prepare you well for high school, and that perhaps the course should focus more on the middle school (6^th – 8^th grade). Mr. Keenan, Joanne Kastberg, and Patty Kiernan will sit down and discuss this issue.
• Lunch: The students are not happy, especially with the last minute changes. Mr. Keenan is going to talk to the food provider about this.
• Breakfast: We are going to try offering daily breakfast, which will be from 7:45A to 8:15A. This will begin after Catholic Schools Week.
• A suggestion was made to survey parents on how they could/would be able to volunteer more time to the school.

The meetings were closed with another prayer led by Ann.