PTO Council Meeting Minutes for January 11, 2012

In Attendance:

PTOC BOARD

President	Marcia Tabenken

Secretary	Alicia Bowman

Health & Safety	Sue Flicop

PTO Presidents

Angier	Emily Prenner

Angier	Sally DiLoreto

Burr	Ted Vahey

Cabot	Jen Abbott

Countryside	Abby Schwartz

Mason-Rice	May Chiu

Mason-Rice	Julia Hamilton

Mason-Rice	Sunwoo Kahng

Peirce	Shelby Chamberlain

Preschool	Erik Dubovik

Underwood	Laura Davis

Underwood	Erin Lake

Day	Rebecca Craig

Day	Mary John

Other Attendees:

David Fleishman	NPS, Superintendent

Maren Oslund	Program Director, Understanding Our Differences

Carolyn Judge	Underwood, PTO Vice President, Fundraising

Update from the Superintendent

The next seven weeks are important academic weeks, a great deal of learning going on

Enrollment in Newton schools is growing, unlike some other communities. This challenges us to keep up with the space needs at individual schools.

Burr and Horace Mann have each received a modular in the last month. The 2 modulars for Zervas should be installed later this week.

NPS met with the School Building Authority to discuss requirements for renovating/rebuilding Angier focused on improving building conditions and technology needs. For the latest: http://blogs.wickedlocal.com/newton/2012/01/26/msba-sends-newtons-angier-school-to-the-next-round/#axzz1kxg8NDPy

The annual budgeting process starts soon and there is an increased need to do more forward planning, thinking beyond this year, ideally 3 years down the road.

The school buildings need more flexible space to accommodate small group instruction, breakout space, emotional support

Zervas and Lincoln-Elliott are currently undergoing principal searches.

The Newton Schools Foundation has a new technology partnership to be announce soon (for the latest: http://www.wickedlocal.com/newton/news/x1069937541/Boston-College-to-give-Newton-Public-Schools-300-000-over-three-years-for-technology#axzz1kxdXAy4c )

Technology long range planning continues. Working on a 3 year or less time frame. Looking at iPads and other one-to-one technologies. Leo Brehm, NPS Director of Information Technology presented a 3 year tech plan to School Committee on January 9th. The following is the presentation given to School Committee: http://www3.newton.k12.ma.us/sites/default/files/technology_powerpoint_01_09_12.pdf

Comments

Will there be an upcoming allocation of money from the city to buy technology in the schools? Ideally Newton needs to think differently about how technology is funded. At the city level and using capital instead of operating funds. Any additional funds will be used to address the technology inequities across the schools but are unlikely to be handled in the short-term.

At an earlier PTOC meeting, Leo stated that the IT department would address needs for replacement batteries and added memory for existing PCs in hopes of extending the life of the machines and taking advantage of bulk purchasing discounts as well as replacement teacher laptops, removing these expenses from individual PTOs. Is this happening? PTOC is working with Leo to outline funding priorities for the elementary schools. This information will be shared with schools..

Does the NPS have a position on planned changes to MBTA routes that affect NPS children transportation to and from school? The NPS has signed onto a letter to the MBTA outlining our concerns about changes. The School Committee will be attending the hearing as well.

Understanding Our Differences

Maren Oslund is new to the UOD program this year

The UOD program started in the NPS to help typically functioning kids learn about disabilities that may affect people they know, helping children to become better friends.

The UOD program is in each of the 15 elementary schools. The program is customized to each school, its requirements and the school’s ability to recruit volunteers

The position is challenging, especially given the different cultures at each school. More work can be done to ensure all parents are aware of the program.

Currently there are 10 programs that are designed to be delivered between 3rd and 5th grade. The programs are: Allergic Conditions, Asthma, Autism Spectrum Disorder, Blindness and Low Vision, Deafness and Hard of Hearing, Diabetes, Epilepsy, Intellectual disabilities, Learning disabilities, Physical disabilities.

Each school had a UOD coordinator, ideally schools have a UOD coordinator at each grade level (3,4,5)

Volunteers do not need to go to the training, but they do need to be prepared, preferably having read over the background material and met as a group prior to go over it.

Angier recently did a mini UOD program “Breaking Out Barriers” in kindergarten, 1st & 2nd grade. Teaching the children sign language and other activities. Burr also recently did a similar program.

More information on UOD in Newton can be found at: http://www.understandingourdifferences.org/website/school-programs/

Comments

We have trouble recruiting volunteers. Schools often find it challenging to recruit volunteers. Some schools have had success with recruiting volunteers from the entire school, not just from parents in the grade of the program

Will there be an expansion of the program into other grades? There is potential for expanding the program. A program in middle school is the most likely next step.

Fundraising

In preparation for tonight’s meeting, the PTOs were solicited about fundraising at their school. Tonight we would like to open the floor for questions or to share your schools efforts.

The preschool is looking at the messaging on direct ask and wonders what technology schools have implemented to facilitate the ask and tracking of donations.

Salesforce.com has a new version for non-profits that handles the communications through Constant Contact. Blackbod has similar capabilities through techsoup

Donations made through PayPal are not very efficient as it involves many steps when you need to determine who has paid (eg. such as tracking ticket purchases to an event). Sales marketing software makes this an easier process.

Use of “sales force approach” including profiling seems weird and potentially against PTO objectives of being inclusive and might bring up ethical questions. Confidentiality is crucial but marketing software may provide easier access to data on participation or better insight to giving patterns

Is anyone doing an online directory?

Peirce used Big Tent to facilitate creating the directory this year. Every family was sent an email to register with the Peirce Big Tent Site and this was used to collect the directory information. A paper copy of the directory was still printed. Parents are not able to download or forward the directory information. The PTO can now use Big Tent to support fundraising efforts.

Do any schools require families to pay dues to get a directory?

Cabot does, but is considering changing this requirement

Day distributes directories free to 6th grade families, but 7th and 8th grade families have to pay dues. Not everyone pays, though.

NECP found that directories don’t help to raise money, and they don’t charge for them now

Underwood uses community room at Eastern Bank which has a lower transaction cost for online transactions than PayPal. 40 to 50% of Underwood donations and event purchases happen online.

How many of your fundraisers are new vs. the same old ones?

Countryside has been promoting more check writing, eliminating smaller fundraisers. This was done in response to parent feedback from PTO strategy meetings held last year. Eliminated fundraisers include: pie sale, wrapping paper, mystery dinner, Learning Express shopping days. The parent community is interested in the return of the mystery dinner.

Angier has had similar requests from parents for fewer “asks” thus they have eliminated shopping days at local stores. They tried to get rid of ABay which is an internal online auction site that features donations of services from parents (eg. soup of the month…) especially as software requires updating, moving to a site like bidding for good. They have added a Progressive Dinner and a Book Fair.

Day has implemented a few new fundraising items.

www.goodsearch.com Parents establish this as their primary search engine designating Day as their chosen school, the site then pays the school a penny for each search parents generate from its website.

www.donate-educate.org which established donation criteria for sought after items that can be resold. There are different drives throughout the year. The PTO promotes the drive and collects these items and do-donate.org makes a donation to the school.

Day is also promoting an annual fund.

Bigelow is considering implementing a similar effort to www.donate-educate.org that focuses strictly on electronic items. This is referred to as “upcycling” (eg. a step up from recycling) where items are collected, refurbished and sold. The schools receive 50% of the market value of the reconditioned items. Items that are unable to be sold are disposed of in an environmentally responsible way, as opposed to being thrown in standard trash. Memorial Spalding did a drive this past fall. http://causesinternational.org/

Online Auctions: Does anyone use online auctions like Bidding for Good? Bigelow does, but there are no details. Mason-Rice used BFG, which was about the same price as others. With BFG, though, you have access outside your school community, which increases the dollars raised. Limited donations are also available for free from BFG—in fact, some vendors will only work with BFG. The school is also able to identify those items not open to the “outside” community. Finally, by not having an auction in person, the competitiveness of these events is greatly reduced.

Volunteers are needed to ask everyone for items or send out letters, then pick the items up or follow-up. Some items are repeated year to year. On average, auction items bring in about 50% of their price.

Mason-Rice set up the auction online and then had a party at the end. They raised $35K last year, but averaged between $20 and $25K the four previous years. Bigelow had a kick-off party instead. Underwood has had an auction as part of a spring event.

Annual Appeals: This year Mason-Rice is not doing an aggressive push for an auction due to the availability of volunteers. Instead, they had an annual fund drive early in the year. The letter was changed from the “average family gave…” to the “cost per student is…” and the PTO ended up going over their goal by about 200% with 60% participation.

Cabot did a check-writing campaign as well. On the donation forms, people could check off $100, $200, etc. or give what they wanted. There might be people who would give more, and they want to find a way to capture that.

Survey: NECP will head up a survey of the PTOs asking how much was raised by year from 2008 to 2011 overall, by event, and the amount of effort required for each.

Qualitative elements will be added to the survey, since there are other issues to consider. As an example of a cultural difference, Angier decided to try the basket raffle that Mason-Rice found so successful, but it didn’t work for the Angier community.

Upcoming meetings & dates

Next PTOC meeting Wednesday, February 8th at 7:30.