Pleasant Ridge PTA

Communications Committee Report

PR PTA Meeting 04.14.2016 (Summary & Reports)

Greetings from the PTA and happy instant summer! Here’s an update on what happened at the April PR PTA meeting last week: We heard about how the building improvements are going, about plans for Earth Day, and we voted to buy Chromebook computers for next year’s 2nd grade classrooms. We also discussed the plans for our last fundraising event of the year, Parents Night Out on May 14, which will be a fun bowling night and silent auction. Tickets are on sale now. The cost is $20 per person and includes shoes, 2 games, pizza and entry to the silent auction. Natalie Samp, Sara Troyer, Amy Spooner, Jennifer Steben and others have been working hard to make sure this event is a lot of fun!

And lastly, we heard the results from the nominating committee, who has been working to identify a slate of candidates for next year’s board. A number of board members will be leaving next year, so there will be lots of new faces. All PTA members at next month’s meeting can then vote to elect the slate. Thank you to everyone who applied! The candidates for the 2016-17 school year are:

President: Jennifer Steben, Secretary: Megan Brown, Treasurer: Melissa Wild-Speicher,

VP Communications: Amy Good, VP Enrichment: Meg Phillips, VP Fundraising: Amy Spooner, VP Volunteers: Lindsay Winkler

3rd Grade Representative: Jackie Sweet, 2nd Grade Representative: Jill Stacy, 1st Grade Representative: Cris Supina, Kindergarten Representative: Amy Wallen

Our next meeting will be on Thursday, May 12th at 9:00 a.m. in the Teachers’ Lounge. It will be the last meeting of the school year, so please join us if you can!

Agenda: PTA Meeting Agenda 4.14.16

Minutes: PTA Meeting Minutes – 4.14.16

PR PTA Meeting 03.10.2016 (Summary & Reports)

Happy almost Spring from the PTA! Here’s an update on what happened at the March PR PTA meeting last week: Our guests were Nick and Amy Wallen from Benito’s Pizza. They’re Pleasant Ridge parents and are passionate about helping our school maximize our fundraising dollars. They have lots of good ideas about how to modify the Dough Raising promotion to simplify it and make it more fun and rewarding, so we will definitely be considering these ideas for next Fall.

We also talked about the nominating process for new board members. Several of the current board members will be leaving their positions at the end of this school year, so we will need new parents to take over. Please think about volunteering if you can! It’s a great way to get to know other parents and teachers and your kids will love seeing you at school. More information will be coming out this week to explain how to apply to be on the board.

Other things we talked about included the upcoming Book Fair, Teacher Conference Dinner and the Spring Dance, all of which will take place this week. And we talked about the possibility of a kids event at “Painting with a Twist” during April, so look for more information on that in the coming weeks. Our next meeting will be on Thursday, April 14th at 9:00 a.m. in the Teachers’ Lounge, so please join us if you can! And think about volunteering to join the board. It’s a fun and very rewarding experience.

Agenda: PTA Meeting Agenda 3.10.16

Minutes: PTA Meeting Minutes – 03.10.16

Communications Committee Report

PR PTA Meeting 02.18.2016 (Summary & Reports)

March is Reading Month was the big topic of discussion at the February PR PTA meeting last week. The theme will be “Reading Builds Character” and lots of things are being planned, including an exciting week with an actual author! We can’t wait to share more about this with you in the coming days. We also talked about the upcoming Book Fair during the week of March 14th, and the Spring Dance, which will be on March 18. We’ve earned lots of “Scholastic Bucks” from our past Book Fairs and our teachers are busy using that money to order more and more books.

Coming up in May, on the 14th, we’ll be hosting a Bowling party and silent auction fundraiser at Maplewood Lanes from 6:00 – 8:00 p.m., so be sure to put that on your calendars. That night will be just for parents, so book those babysitters now!

And Mr. Bezeau gave us an update on the upcoming building and playground changes. More improvements will be made to Pleasant Ridge than to any of the other schools. Quotes are being obtained for the playground work, which will include a new playground just for our special needs and very young children, as well as leveling work, new surfacing for the main playground and seeding of the soccer field. And design work is being completed for the changes to the entrance, vestibule and office as well as the new locations for the Spanish and Art classrooms. These are exciting times at Pleasant Ridge! Our next meeting will be on Thursday, March 10th at 9 a.m., so please join us if you can!

Agenda: PTA Meeting Agenda 02.18.16

Minutes: PTA Meeting Minutes – 02.18.16

PR PTA Meeting 01.14.2016 (Summary & Reports)

The PR PTA had its first meeting of the new year last week and here’s a summary of what we talked about: Most exciting is that “Schools of Rock” is coming up on Jan. 29 and the PTA is giving away a set of 4 tickets! Anyone (besides board members) who is a paid PTA member will be entered into the drawing on next Monday, Jan. 25. Our very own Pleasant Ridge staff are the defending champs, so the teachers are working hard on their performance! If you are not a member yet, you can join online by clicking on “Membership/Join PRPTA” at the top of the screen at prpta.org. Then send your $10 check or cash to school with your child, in an envelope marked “PTA membership”.

Janet Hart, a PR parent, gave a very interesting report from the “class size task force” that presented at the school board meeting last week. They studied class sizes for K-6 classes and found that a realistic request would be to ask for 4 additional teachers next year (across all the elementary schools and Heritage). This would help us get to reasonably smaller classes without costing too much. The Board of Education is reviewing this and they will make the decision. It was an interesting discussion and there were lots of questions.

We also talked about the changes that PR will undergo soon to redesign the entrance to the school. Work may begin as early as April, so it may be a bit messy for the remainder of the year. But in the end, our school will be a much safer place. There will be more updates on this at each PTA meeting. Other things we talked about included Math night, when we will need lots of parent volunteers(!), and the Spring Book Fair and dance, which will happen during the week of March 14. We’re also beginning plans for “March is Reading Month” and there were suggestions for a Butterfly Garden that the kids could get involved in and maybe additional benches outside, like a “buddy bench” on the playground. Lots of good ideas from the parents who were there!

Our next meeting will be shifted a week and will be on Thursday, February 18th at 9 a.m. Please join us and tell us your ideas for making Pleasant Ridge an even more fantastic place for our kids!

Agenda: PTA Meeting Agenda 01.14.16

Minutes: PTA Meeting Minutes – 01.14.16

PR PTA Meeting 12.17.2015 (Summary & Reports)

Happy New Year! Hope everyone had a fun and restful break. Here’s the news from the December PTA meeting, which was just before the holiday break: Our guests at the meeting were Cheryl Hoeft and Lisa Dempsey, from the Foundation for Saline Area Schools. They filled us in on all the good things that the Foundation does for our district, including lots of grants to fund interesting projects and products, like Standing Workstations, the Next Gen Gym and Music Together. The Foundation will be having their annual fundraiser/party, called “Snowblast” on Feb. 6 at Travis Pointe and tickets are on sale now. A new Ford F-150 will be raffled off, so purchase a raffle ticket if you’re interested in that!

Another topic that was discussed at the meeting was the Girls on the Run program for girls in grades 3-6. Registration for that is open through February. Girls will meet twice a week with coaches and learn about the importance of a healthy lifestyle and about being supportive with each other.

Then we talked about PTA stuff, most importantly, all the great things that are being purchased with the money that was raised last Fall: new walkie talkies for staff, wobble chairs, another Apple TV, and BOOKS! Lots of them! We also approved more mini grants for some comfortable seating for Kindergarteners and book carts for 3rd grade classes. We talked about the other fundraisers that were held recently and how those went: Zap Zone – not so great, Pancake supper and book fair – terrific! and Yankee Candles – awesome! Thanks to all who participated in and helped to make these events successful.

Coming up in the new year, look for some of these events to add to your calendar: Family Movie Night on Jan. 15, Math Night on Feb. 11, Art Night on Feb. 16 and the Science Fair on Feb. 25. More details will be sent out about these soon. Our next meeting will be on Thursday, Jan. 14 at 9:00 a.m. so please join us if you can!

Agenda: PTA Meeting Agenda – 12.17.15

Minutes: PTA Meeting Minutes – 12.17.15

Grade Reps Committee Report

Treasurer Committee Report

Communications Committee Report

PR PTA Meeting 11.12.2015 (Summary & Reports)

The PR PTA had a really productive meeting for November last week. First and foremost, we celebrated the passing of the School Bond on Nov. 3rd, which is so incredibly important for our school! Now, plans can move forward with making all the necessary repairs and enhancements that are so badly needed. Thank you to all who got out and voted for the bond!

Next, our special guest at the meeting was Doug Busch, from Busch’s Fresh Food Markets, who was there to talk about the Cash For Education program and how it will be changing as well as the steps we can take to make the most of it for Pleasant Ridge. He handed out some information that we will pass on to all of our families, so look for that to come home soon. Basically, current cardholders just need to log into their MyWay account online and follow some simple steps and then you won’t need to use the card anymore because your MyWay account will be automatically linked to Pleasant Ridge when you make purchases. The PTA is going to work harder to encourage more families to sign up because we could easily earn lots more money for the school this way! One interesting fact he told us is that Dexter Middle School consistently earns more money than any other school in the area – about $30,000 per year!

The rest of the meeting was devoted mainly to reviewing all the requests that have come in from the staff for things that we can purchase using our Fall Fundraising money – thank you again for supporting our school! There’ve been a lot of requests! We approved several right away, like more books for the classrooms, more of the Wobble Chairs and some additional technology items to enhance the learning experience for our kids. A number of others required a bit more research and we’ll review them again at next month’s meeting. We also talked about plans for upcoming events, like the Anniversary Party at Gratzi on Nov. 17, the Holiday Parade on Dec. 5 (it’s going to be SO fun this year!) and the Pancake Supper on Dec. 8. And then we also worked on nailing down dates for some of the events in the new year.

Our next meeting will be a week later than usual, so please mark your calendars and join us on Thursday, Dec. 17 at 9:00 a.m. to hear about everything that’s going on at Pleasant Ridge!

Agenda: PTA Meeting Agenda – 111215

Minutes: PTA Meeting Minutes – 111215

Grade Reps Committee Report

Treasurer Committee Report

Communication Committee Report

PR PTA Meeting 10.07.2015 (Summary & Reports)

Last week was the PR PTA meeting for October and there was much to discuss and celebrate. So much has been going on this Fall! Scot Graden was our special guest at the meeting and he was there to explain the details of the upcoming Bond Proposal, which will be the first bond proposal for the school district since 2000, when funding was approved for the new high school and Harvest Elementary. 15 years later, there are lots of repairs and improvements needed all over the district, including building a new, more secure entrance right here at Pleasant Ridge and at the other elementary schools. Also on the list are improvements to our bus fleet, which is the oldest in the area. The Bond vote will be on November 3 and an informational meeting is planned for Monday, October 19 at 7 p.m. in the Media Center at Liberty School.

We also talked about how the Fall Fundraiser is going and WOW, it’s a HUGE success! As of last Wednesday, we had surpassed our goal of $17,000 and as of today, Oct. 11, we’ve raised over $25,000! Plans were discussed for the 70’s Dance on Oct. 8 and the Awards assembly on Friday, Oct. 16. Parents are welcome to attend the fun water balloon assembly, so come if you can. Plans for other upcoming events and fundraisers were also discussed, like the 25th Anniversary party at Gratzi on Nov. 17, a Zap Zone event you’ll hear more about soon and PR on the Porch, next Friday, Oct. 16. Thank you to all of you that have offered to volunteer for various things. We’ve received a ton of volunteer forms! There are still open positions for some events so please let one of us know if you’d like to help out. We’re also excited to announce that we’ve added another person to the PTA Board. Kindergarten mom Amy Good will be our new Kindergarten representative. She’ll help support the K room parents and help maintain consistent communication among the classes. We look forward to working with her! And we look forward to seeing you at the next meeting, which will be on Thursday, Nov. 12 at 9 a.m. Thank you to those who were able to come last week!

Agenda: PTA Meeting Agenda – 100715

Minutes: PTA Meeting Minutes – 100715

Grade Reps Committee Report

Treasurer Committee Report