CAPITOL HILL PARENT TEACHER ORGANIZATION (PTO)

MEETING MINUTES

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 5, 2007, 7:00 PM

Business Meeting

PTO President Darlene Haecker called the meeting to order.

Minutes from the October 2007 meeting were unavailable for approval.

Budget (Carolyn Larson):  Budget is in place, largely from last year, and totals $32,560.  This amount is solid based on past years’ receipts from direct drive and April Carnival fundraisers.   In 2008/09 40% of budget will be run through rubric.  Line items such as welcome dinners, directory, newsletter will not be subjected to rubric.  Motion to approve budget as submitted passed.

Principal’s Report (Louis Mariucci):  Front office staff has been hired and will start in December. 

Grace Raymond will become the Curriculum Coordinator.  She will observe and work with teachers on Parallel Curriculum.  Since she used to handle open houses and incoming parent tours and questions that piece needs to be picked up by others, potentially parents.  Many parents feel more comfortable talking to parents with kids at CH instead of school staff.

Additional $100,000 from Site Council has been used to increase jr. high staff, increase Grace Raymond’s time, and put $20,000 toward scholarships for after school language programs.  We are also upgrading computer lab a bit at a time.  Cafeteria tables will be replaced by round tables with 8 seats bolted to tables.  Schools that have used this configuration have seen lowered discipline, noise issues.

Old Business

Directory (Ayesha Shariff):  Many late responses this year.  Should be ready to distribute by Thanksgiving.  No rough draft printed this year due to expense and confusion surrounding draft format vs. final format.  Parents uncomfortable with having this information online for review.

Playground:  Jan Nixon not present.  Decision as to whether refurbish or replace old equipment will be made at meeting on Nov. 13^th.  Fundraising gala is February 23^rd at the Children’s Museum with Mayor Coleman as keynote speaker.

Dances:  Discussion about dates, who will organize.  Ed Davis will coordinate 1-3^rd dance on February 29^th,  4^th-6^th grade dance will be March 6^th and Carolyn Larson will head up this effort.

Newsletter(Maggie O’Reilly): All is well, proceeding nicely.

Listserv:  Mike Caerwyn and Ed Davis offered to explore hardware and usage issues.  Want to set this up for use next year.  Parents could be sent an email invite to submit contact info, or could be handled by room parents.  Must be voluntary. 

Fundraising/Direct Drive:  Darlene is working on direct drive letter, will send rough draft to officers, past officers for feedback. 

• Still looking for parent to handle tshirts. 
• Carolyn volunteers to be Carnival chair, and Laura Park agrees to submit volunteer request for newsletter.  The date for the carnival is April 18, 2008. 
• Rakes!  Rakes! Rakes!  Need after school groups to generate ideas for ways to get rid of 14,000 rakes.
• Milk lids and Box Tops just sitting around.  Need volunteer to take over.

PTO Bylaws:  Annie Yetter to look in to updating bylaws to reflect our current way of working.

Meeting change:  Darlene proposed changing meetings to 6:30-7:30pm for open agenda items, and tackling issues requiring votes such as funding requests from 7:45-8:45 pm.  It was suggested that it was critical to maintain transparency of PTO decision-making, and for parents to feel included, not isolated.  Mr. Mariucci suggested that if officers didn’t want to take immediate vote on funding issues raised, that the vote could be taken at next PTO meeting. 

Meeting adjourned 8:55 pm.

Respectfully submitted by Annie Yetter from notes transcribed by Aerine Caerwyn.