Waterville Elementary PTA Minutes

Wednesday, April 3, 2024

Treasury Report:

• Savings: $280.73
• Checking: $16,964.93
• Paypal: $386.11
• Trivia Night + Cash: $504
• Total $18,135.77

Finished Fundraisers:

• Family Trivia Night: Great success
  1. Somewhere between 70-80 attended
  2. Made $304
  3. Lots of positive feedback
  4. Thank you to Mainely’s Brew, Selah Tea, and Movie Theater for donations
  5. Thank you to Superintendent Peter Hallen and Lou for hosting
  6. Decided to make it part of the annual rotation

Upcoming Fundraisers:

• Suggestions for next year’s calendar:
  1. October: BINGO Night
  2. January: Trivia Night
  3. March: BINGO Night
  4. May: Family Skate Night
  5. Request to have ASHS host
• Family Skate Night
  1. Scheduled for: Thursday, May 16^th from 6:00-8:00 PM
  2. Need to schedule Promotion: Social Media, Flyer, Email Blast
  3. Need to get volunteers for set-up, bake sale donations, work concessions
• Spring Spirit wear Push
  1. Throughout the month of April, try to push spirit wear sale
  2. Sarah LeVan to make flyers to send home in folders
  3. Need to do email blast
  4. Need to continue social media promotion
• Carnival
  1. Set for Saturday, June 1 from 11:00-2:00
  2. Confirmed Community Partners: Waterville Creates, Waterville Library, Children’s Discovery Museum, AYCC, Colby Art Museum, Children’s Book Donor, Waterville Fire
  3. Still Working on Confirmation: Waterville Police, National Guard
  4. Do we want to ask Mayor? Possibly have a voter registration table
  5. Need to check in on Food confirmation
  6. Need to order prizes and tickets
  7. Need to start promotion campaign
  8. Carnival Committee next meeting scheduled: Tuesday, April 9^th @ 6:30 PM via Zoom

Student Enrichment Initiatives

• Solar Eclipse
  1. 500 Glasses purchased and delivered for GJMS
• 2^nd Grade Request
  1. Asked for $500 for 2 assemblies with Mr Drew
  2. PTA voted and approved the request
  3. Jesse to write check and deliver to GJMS
• 3^rd Grade Field Trip to Fort Western
  1. PTA had funded $800 for Fort Western Field Trip
  2. Trip was cancelled due to worker shortage at the fort
  3. Looking for alternative, will keep PTA informed
  4. If folks have alternative ideas, please share with PTA
• Spring Teacher Grants
  1. To be delivered during Teacher Appreciation week
  2. $50/classroom teacher
  3. Waiting for total classroom teacher count from both school sites
  4. Will conduct a vote for approval of funds via email

Teacher Appreciation

• Teacher Appreciation Week Ideas: First full week of May
  1. Flyer goes home with students week before 
  2. Purchase stainless steel mugs for teachers, under $10/mug
  3. Current Count (note: principals emailed updated numbers following the meeting. These notes indicate the updated numbers, not those reported at the meeting)
     • ASHS: 51 staff
     • GJMS: 138 (includes all shared staff w/ASHS)
     • Bus Drivers: 15 (estimate)
     • Total: 204
  4. Recommend we purchase: 210, this allows us to have extra in case we’re off and to give one to superintendent Peter Hallen and assistant superintendent Jen Allen.
  5. Sara Wing will work with Tabitha King on the design and get a quote and shipment date
  6. We will vote to confirm the final purchase 
  7. Jesse Meredith will make purchase through the PTA bank
  8. Sara Wing has already confirm $450 worth of community sponsors to help offset the purchase of this gift. She is still waiting to hear from a couple more sponsors. Elk’s Lodge $250, Allen Financial $100 (maybe more), ??? Real-estate $100. 
  9. PTA tentatively approved to spending up to $2,000 on this initiative.
  10. We will also deliver the Spring Teacher grants on the Friday of this week
• Sarah Staffiere suggested that we figure out how to ensure that we are properly supporting all teaching staff, including special education. Suggested that we give departmental gifts during this week. It was suggested that we make these departments aware that they can make these requests, but that if we alter the norms of the “Teacher Grants,” other departments will feel slighted and will always be hard to determine where to draw the line.
• Also recommended that we schedule to have PTA representatives attend early-in-the-year teacher in-service meetings to introduce next year’s president (not Carrie) and make sure that all grade levels, departments, etc. know that they can make requests to the PTA (ex. Physical education, library, nurse, literacy specialists, special education, etc.)
• David Motel suggested that we add a feature to the website that would allow teachers to make these requests formally through there. This agreed to be a great idea and he will work on adding this feature, but we will still need to let teachers know how/when they should make these requests.

Yearbook Committee

• Working on Layout
• Christina got pictures from Third Grade concert
• Confirming Kids’ permissions with Erica Morrison
• Rebecca also had word from the printing company that they will send free order forms to us to distribute.
• Sarah LeVan will help with Social Media promotion
• David will add to the website