PTO Meeting Minutes
October 12, 2020
NES PTO General Board Meeting MINUTES
7:30 pm Via Zoom (~14 people in attendance)
1. Principal and Teacher Updates
- No specific updates from the NES Staff.
- Teachers are excited to now have PTO sponsored programming such as First In Math, Time for Kids and Scholastic News to use in their classrooms.
- Kids were happy to receive their Sweetheart Dance t-shirts from last year.
- Teachers were informed to let PTO know if they ever need anything that we may be able to help with at any time.
- Teachers are thanking parents for preparing their kids for school and online learning each week.
2. Treasurer Report
(Specific dollar amounts have been omitted. As always, we discuss the financials in detail at our monthly General PTO Meeting.)
During the month of September two large refunds were received which offset the expenses paid during the month. The PTO received a refund from the Spirit of Philadelphia for the cancelled 6th grade trip from May 2020. The PTO also received a refund from Music Theatre International relating to rights and licensing from the cancelled Lion King production from March 2020.
- Expenses paid during September included to CRSD for reimbursement to Newtown Elementary for the homework agenda books for NES students. In addition, the PTO continued to fund subscriptions for student programming including RAZ Kids for third grade and Time for Kids for fourth grade. The PTO accounting records were moved to an online platform during September and monthly charges for accounting will now be a monthly recurring expense. Other recurring monthly expenses were also paid including the Smore newsletter and teacher water cooler.
- In July 2020, the Treasurer submitted a renewal application to the PA Dept of Revenue to renew the NES PTO’s Sales Tax exemption status. The application is still in process and a response is expected in November 2020.
- The PNC account was reconciled as of 9/30/20 by the Treasurer (J. Bukowski) and the bank statement and reconciliation were reviewed and approved by one of the Co-VPs (C. Katona).
3. Teacher Grants
- This is a new school year so the teacher grants are open again for all the teachers.
- PTO has updated the form and has posted it on the PTO website for all teachers to access.
4. KidStuff Coupon Book Fundraiser
- The fundraiser is live until Oct. 26th.
- We are not able to hold our regular school events and fundraisers this year so this is one fundraiser we can do and books are sent directly to the families who order them.
- As of today, there have only been
5. Box Tops Coupons
- The PTO has placed a plastic container/box below the sandwich board outside the school for families to drop "Clipped Box Tops."
- The sandwich board says "Box Tops Here" with arrows that point to the box on the ground.
- The box is there 24/7, so they can be dropped at any hour that is convenient.
- The box will remain in that location until October 28th as they need to be bundled and mailed by Nov. 1st.
6. Home Room Coordinators (HRCs)
- The majority of classrooms only had one volunteer.
- In past years we have had 2 HRCs per classrooms, but given the limited volunteers this year, we will be assigning only 1 HRC/classroom to be consistent across all grades.
- We do believe it is better to have two HRCs (two heads is better than one); therefore, we will be letting the selected HRC's know of the others who volunteered and they can reach out directly to those people to help them throughout the year in addition to any other classroom parents.
- A list of all volunteers was shared. In the classrooms that had multiple volunteers, they were numbered and then a number was pulled out of cup. The volunteer whose name corresponded with the number drawn was marked as the HRC.
- An email will be sent to all the selected HRC with more detailed instructions about how they can begin supporting the teachers, such as creating a classroom contact list.
- The PTO would like to send food/lunch delivered to the school in place of the yearly catered luncheon.
- The teachers reported that many teachers do not use the staffroom. Teachers are eating in different locations and not sure of the comfort levels and they are not certain if it would even be allowed.
- If it is approved by Mr. Francis, we would instead have boxed lunches, or individually wrapped, to be delivered and picked up by individual teachers and taken to their personal locations.
8. Scarecrow Decorating Contest
- Mr. Francis has not yet heard from the district as to if schools would be allowed to do anything for Halloween.
- The PTO will reach out one last time to Mr. Francis as to if we could use the grassy area next to the school parking lot to display family made scarecrows. If it is not approved, we will set the contest up as a virtual event. Families can make the scarecrows at home and send in a photo. We will put together a slide show to be shown to all students during the week leading up to Halloween.
9. Father Daughter Dance T-Shirts
- The t-shirts from last year's canceled event were distributed to all students still at our school.
- Last year's teachers and grades were listed for each student shirt. That means the office staff had to individually look up each name and figure out this years teachers in which to deliver the shirts. They office did this in record time and we thank them!!
- 10 shirts were returned and we have reached out via email to those families. We will be mailing some out instead.
10. Virtual Classroom Party Discussion
- Question for teachers - Would virtual classroom parties be possible on a Wednesday afternoon?
- School instruction is finished at 2:45 on Wednesday. Teachers then have office hours and team meetings. We would need to speak to Mr. Francis and the rest of the staff and then figure out when something like this could be done.