President's Page
What's new with the PTA
The new school year has begun and we are off to a very busy start! We had over 1200 kids and parents attend Movie Night (otherwise known as the "best night of the year" according to one 5th grader!) The Hometown Fair booth was a great success resulting in new homes for many fish. Gift wrap appears set to meet its goals and our kids were excited to be able to donate flocks of chickens to needy families. Our goal this year is to keep the "fun" in fundraising by choosing events that foster our community spirit both for parents and kids.
We're also hard at work on many initiatives including the computer and technology plan for our school. We applied some of the parent donations from last spring's Parent Party to purchase several new computers for the computer lab, to make sure the lab has enough up to date computers so that even our largest classes have a computer for each student. The computers that were replaced are now in the library for student use! The remaining donations will be applied to our three-year computer replacement plan.
This plan is developed to implement the District's policy that no computer should be over four years old. Computers will be replaced over time to avoid the spike in costs that we would incur if we replaced them all at the same time every fourth year. Because we had so many new or refurbished computers before last year, we waited till this year to begin implementing the computer replacements. Our plan calls for us to replace half the classroom computers this year, half next year and the computer lab in the third year. These numbers work out to approximately 18 computers purchased for classrooms and offices this year, 18 next year, and 33 in the third year. The oldest computers will be replaced first. We will consolidate our purchases with the other schools in the District to realize the maximum cost savings. This is a significant investment for our PTA and we thank those who contributed their donations to support this program!
We are also working with Jeri and with School Site Council to review other technology needs for the classrooms. Rather than replace outdated equipment (e.g., VCR's) with similar equipment, we want to invest in longer lasting, higher performing technology for our classrooms.
Another hot topic is school safety/security. In the PTA's budget this year, we set aside $25,000 for security upgrades. The first purchase will be the Raptor system, an ID reader to screen visitors to our campus. ID's will be scanned and checked against state and national databases to ensure that no one is on campus that has a history of violations against children. School Site Council is reviewing alternatives to upgrade our school security including cameras and motion sensor lighting. We will keep you posted on developments as they arise!
Another area of focus has been streamlining our communications to eliminate redundancies. We're working to improve the website and Monday Messenger and have them work better together. If you have questions about PTA or school issues, we encourage you to use the "contact us" link on the home page of this website. Someone will respond to your question and it will help generate ideas for what information should be posted on the website! Have a great school year!
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