November Minutes

FOW Meeting Minutes November ‘09 Joe- welcome to the November meeting. Want to open saying thanks to Michael Stenger once again for being the Walgrove angel. Playa Vista the Educational Trust program and Walgrove has received $5000 in funds to be used how we want. Michael-the money can be used for principal improvements and/or field trips. The money goes directly to Walgrove it is not part of FOW monies. Michelle- I have a petition to sign for safety. Walgrove and Ocean Charter are working on this together as a co-location effort. We are trying to make drop off as safe as it can be. We are hoping for a crossing guard and another cross walk and a designated drop off zone in front of Walgrove on Walgrove Avenue. Alan (Treasurer report)- We have raised $40,000. There is another $30,000 left to raise. There is still plenty of money in the account in terms of cash flow. We paid salaries for the month of October and we are still okay in terms of cash flow. We are now operating on this years funds, we have spent last years surplus (which was $30,000). Francis and annual fund update – Out of the 100,000 we budgeted for this year, we have raised $70,000 dollars. We are going to start calling the families that have not donated as of yet this year and I believe if we get all of those people to come in we will reach our goal. In December we are looking to pull into friends and family and we have a letter coming out, but you don’t have to wait for that. Also, you can point people to the FOW website and make an online donation. Joe – what percentage in terms of where we were last year? Francine- Last year in Feb we were at 30%. What I see is that in terms of other schools like Mar Vista, we are getting just as much in terms of donations (amount), which is really great. Joe- We could have Soren add a $5 and $10 donation to the FOW annual fund donation site for some of the folks who want to make a smaller donation. Sarah Reimer – feel like this year is off to a big start and grateful for the team that is being built. Great news on annual fund, we are up and running. Not everyone can do everything, but we still need to really get the word out because a lot of this stuff is built on the backs of a handful of people. Sara Dee-The Entertainment Book/ Sally Foster fundraiser. When Sara and I drafted out what we envisioned each family selling we said okay, 3 books per family b/c that would put us at the getting 50% back from the company for our sales. Just reiterated we hope that everyone can get everyone to place orders and you can go online as well. Michelle- you can also put it on Facebook and I got 3 sales. Sara Reimers- please encourage people because we have to fundraise. We did the legwork to find something that people would see as valuable. Joe- we have a week left and the issue is we really need to promote it. Sara D- Arlene has a phone call going out tonight. Sara R- our goal is to raise $10,000 out of this so our sales goal is $20,000. I would like to become just an annual fund and an auction school and not have to beat the pavement for some of this stuff, but this is where we are and for some people this is what they can do better than writing a check or going to an auction. Either way, we need the money on-board. Ralph’s card/ escrip- people need to sign up annually and indicate Walgrove as the beneficiary. If you do this once within 72 hours your card will be active. So please let’s get the word out about this. You can’t do this over the phone; you have to do this online. A sheet is being passed out with a barcode that you take to the store and scan and your card is automatically linked. Sara- Dine out CPK on Tuesday and Wednesday and they are more strict than islands you must bring your flyer to get credit. Barbara Einstein- Whole foods scrip. I purchase the cards through Whole Foods and then we sell the cards in $50 increments and when you use them we get 5% back. I will be in the quad at pick up with these on most days and also at all school assembly on Fridays. You can come to my house – whatever. Joe-before we move on if I can say something about the fundraising, I do feel like we are preaching to the converted in this room. I just hope we can find other ways to get the word out to others. We need to get to the rest of the school so if anyone has any ideas of how to convey this to other groups at this school please let us know. Rebecca Carpenter offers an idea about an art project that the children could do that would help illustrate through an art project. Sara R- and anyone have any passion to go to businesses please let me know. We are going to start having the cornerstone banners. Joe- I think we need to consider how much we want to use the kids as a device/ tool for fundraisers. Shari-Introduce Lisa Tauscher the co-chair of grant writing. Have a few grants on deck that can be handed out to interested parents who would like to participate. We are planning on an information session for those that are interested in submitting on grants. An FOW email will be going out shortly. Joe- the reason we are here and have to work as hard as we do is because of three people we have in this room. We will start w/ Rebecca from Studio Class. Rebecca-In Kindergarten we are working on self-portraits and talking about feelings. We are also working on shapes as part of kindergarten standards. We are also working with stickers and making self-portraits with them. I am slowing the pace down and going much deeper into the topic rather than covering such a wide range of topics. First- Our main idea is to choose animals, who you would like to be and the kids are going to the library to do research and look up key words about their animal. 2nd grade—in ms burr’s her core unit is on kindness. So we are attaching adjectives. Mr. Merrick is passionate about coping. 4th grade- we are doing a project and looking at space through time. And we will create a big installation of art about science and astronomy. 5th grade Computer Teacher- Currently working with 1st through 5th. First graders will becoming once a month until the end of January. I have been focusing on basic computer skills and keyboarding skills. Upper grades we are incorporating research skills. I have put together a bare bones website that will be linked to the LAUSD site that the kids can use. I am working with the teachers based on what they are studying; first grade is animals so we are researching on animals. Joe- Are you familiar with kidzooey? It is a kid search engine that blocks out anything that children should not be surfing on the web. Coach Rachel (PE)- I really enjoy the kids and really want the kids to try and keep them active the whole time. If you don’t keep them busy they can get into trouble, but try to get them involved. There is a PE log I leave in my box if you want to take a look. If we do a warm up we run or jog. They do something they can do together and stress directions, teaching how to listen and remember. The kids learn how to handle a ball and handle a paddle. Sometimes we break the kids up into squads and they will work within the squad for the day. The kids use a lot of the equipment. I would also like to reach out to the parent community for some volunteers. I see every class once a week. I have a schedule in my box just open it up and look at it and you can see what we did for the week and LAUSD has certain things they require and I try and do that. Joe- quickly to our FOW employees if you can communicate to us as quickly as possible if your schedule changes, so keep us in the loop as your schedules shift due to teaching changes, please let us know. Principal Arlene Fortier—Thanks to Michael Stenger and the Playa Trust. I am looking into using the money to help get a few more computers. This will help with the math program because there are online math programs for kids to go online for extra math support so the teachers can maximize their time. We were able to get our PI plan written and we had a meeting with the teachers today who approved the plan. I made the community wide phone call tonight asking parents to come by tomorrow and take a look at the plan as well. We do have to look at our 320 minutes a day that are allocated for instruction and it doesn’t mean that students won’t get art and PE, but in terms of instruction, teachers are having to look at that. I will also let you know if we are having to shift schedules. The key thing to remember is that we want to get out of PI because the more years you add, the more stuff that is involved with it. We did receive a set of volunteer cards arrive here so I am sending those home soon. I will be having a volunteer training next Friday and there are some things that I need to help volunteers understand, the do’s and don’ts. Any volunteers who were approved last year are welcome to come to the training. We just want to be sure that you know what to do and you won’t be standing around asking the teacher what to do. It is starting to come in.