3/13/01
Meeting held at Cedarmere Elementary at 7:15 p.m.
Call to Order: The meeting was called to order at 7:20 p.m.
President's Remarks: It is with great sadness that I announce that Debbie Hack has passed away. Out of respect for Debbie and with compassion for her friends and family let us please have a moment of silence. We will forward details about the service and any outreach that we will be doing from the PTA via email.
We have a lot of things to cover tonight. An agenda was distributed.
Anyone who is interested, we have 4 tickets for the State PTA council.
The county is now doing the playgrounds. What started as a 5-7 year project has been completed within two years because of our action and planning. As such we are getting all of our playgrounds redone within 2 years.
Arts Excel: Cedarmere is one of two elementary schools in Baltimore County that are participating in this program. There is proven evidence that music helps children to learn. There will be an Arts Excel night on April 4 at 6:15. This is an informational meeting, not a fund raising event. Dessert will be served.
To cover the artists coming into the classroom, we need to raise additional funds to cover the funds that used to be covered by the grant. This will amount to about $12,500 a year -- this covers visiting artist’s fees. We have established a restricted fund that is part of the Baltimore County schools that provides tax incentives for people and businesses to contribute. This is called 'Cedarmere Helping Hands'. What is the best way to raise funds for this? The best way to raise funds is to go to the individuals who are most impacted by the program. The PTA families are already providing funds to the PTA through other fundraisers.
The visiting artists are scheduled based on when the schools are teaching particular lessons. The artists will be concentrating on particular grade levels. This is also based on the artist's schedules.
Questions to be answered: will raising additional funds put a strain on the PTA? What relationship do we build with the SIT committee and the fund -- the PTA will not have any say over how the money is spent.
Should funds be removed from the PTA budget to help offset an expected decrease in PTA fundraising as a result of competition from this new activity? Should the PTA make a yearly contribution to arts Excel with the understanding that Arts Excel will not do any internal fundraising? This is a discussion for the Budget Committee. Need to outline an optimal layout of what the expenses would be for next year to bring the artists in. There is generally 9 visits per grade level (one per month). Can we split it up so that Cedarmere funds part of it, the PTA part and then the SIT committee part? We need to make this sustainable and we do not want to have competing fund raising efforts. This needs to go to a general meeting for a vote and next year's officers need to endorse this.
We will bring this up again at the next meeting.
Newsletter:
Membership: None. It is closed for this year.
Budget Committee Selection: none.
Event Update:
Cedar Day this is being chaired by Crystal Humphrey. She needs volunteers to help out with this. Everything is under control. This is being held on May 6.
No other PTA events are planned.
Fundraising Update:
Candy -we are almost at break even on this. We need people to pitch in and help sell the candy.
Power Cards -- we have sold about 1/2 of them.
Cedarmere day at Simonds Nursery -- 10% of the proceeds will go to Cedarmere. Saturday, April 28. People will need to present a coupon.
Pizza sale -- the sale is not going very well so far. Need to send reminder flyers out.
Fruit Update:
Fruit has been great this year. David has done an excellent job taking this over. $11,450 has been made so far this year. The March sale will be in $1800 and $1500 range. We have balanced the books on the sales and we have come within .50 on this. We have tightened up on how the sales have been run and things have been much smoother.
Teacher Requests:
Requests for additional moneys above and beyond what we normally allot. We have several requests that have been brought forward tonight.
Mrs. Smith and Mrs. Franz: Thank you for making these funds available to us. Mrs. Franz and I would like to attend a reading workshop that correlates with the Baltimore County reading program. It is a diverse offering that allows for various levels of readers within the same class. They would like to attend together so that they can share ideas and applications of the materials. They would also bring this information back to Cedarmere and share it with the rest of the teachers. The workshop is called "Balanced Reading in the Primary Grades" and it will be held on May 19. It costs $119 per person. The materials that they bring back will be able to be reproduced and shared in the school. The material covers the primary grades. There should be some discussion in the Budget committee about making seminars a line item in the PTA budget again.
Mr. Meerdter: Related to Arts Excel from Mrs. Selnick and Amy Morse are making requests for CD players. Some of the original ones that we obtained are beginning to fail. Mrs. Morse has a broken one and Mrs. Selnick has never had one. The CD/tape players are an integral part of the kindergarten classrooms. The players are going to be about $100 a piece. We need someone to do some shopping and see what the players would cost to get a good quality player at a reasonable price.
Mrs. Salabes: Requesting two kits of materials that are for giving practice to children with speech patterns. One has activities and the other is social skills based. These are reproducibles included that can be reused. Social skills are something that we have not paid a great amount of attention to. Given the recent rash of school incidents, social skills are important.
Mrs. Millirons: We just had a successful Career Day. They needed two busses to get the children over to Chatsworth. The children paid $2 a piece to go to the program, but that only covered 1/2 of the cost. Any contribution would be appreciated. If we do not cover this, they will need to look for other funding. Why wasn't this planned for? Why weren't the children charged more money to cover it.
The total cost for all of these items will be about $600.
Motion: to consider all requests together and accept them.
2nd: the motion was seconded.
Vote: all are in favor of granting these requests.
Mrs. McShane thanked everyone and will let the teachers know.
Teacher Update:
Principal Update:
Nominating Committee: There will be an open house to talk to parents about helping out with the PTA. Charlene is the chair of the committee. The most important slot to fill is the treasurer. We need someone who can jump in before the end of the school year so that the transition can happen smoothly. Would also like to pursue having a class parent and an alternate to get more parents to attend the meetings.
By-Laws: none
New Business: none
Meeting Adjourned: 9:30.
Attendees:
Lisa Sine
Gil Meerdter
Kathy Milligan
Kim Smith
Barbara Marks
Helen McShane
Sandi Kroh
Mickey Goldberg
Barbara Roman
Mary Matzke
Erin Lutz
Charlene Simonds
David Green
Rich Manski
Pam Offutt