September 2024 Meeting Minutes

Written By Laura Fegley

September 4, 2024

Meeting Called to Order 6pm

Michelle motioned to approve the minutes, Anna seconded, all 12 members present voted in favor

Event Close Out

  • Open House Debrief/Feedback(Anna) 

    • Chest Freezer was purchased for this event with the intention to also use it for end of school popsicles, etc

    • Some of the community organizations we expected were not present this year

    • We would like to learn more about the Toyota school supply donations that we received this year, and if that will occur again or if this was a one time gift.

    • Room Rep sign-up is sparse due to Open House ending early

    • A further discussion ensued about what a room rep is, how a room rep knows what to do, how emails for classroom families are obtained, etc. Meg will fill Brandon and Elyse in on these supporting details as they ramp up. A post will be added to the courier requesting Room Reps.

Updates and Upcoming Events

  • Woody’s Welcome Wagon Update (Anna)

    • Anna will manage bag assembly, but needs help with distribution, which will involve bringing bins of assembled bags to the kinder teachers and they will let us know what size each child needs and we just stuff cubbies accordingly. Kelly Henry will help with distribution. Brandon will help create a flyer with important dates/volunteer sign ups for inclusion in the bags.

  • Coffee and Kleenex

    • Sept 5, 9:30 - 10:30 am

    • PTA parents needed to chat with parents (reminder: wear name tags)

    • Coffee and donuts (Keri), Stickers (Meg), PTA materials (Michelle)

    • Keri will pick up coffee, Amy will get donuts

    • Please come and wear your nametag 

  • Woody’s Welcome Walk (formerly Kenwood Crawl) (Amy)

    • Saturday, Sept 21, 9-11am

    • This annual event welcomes families to the Kenwood community with coffee and treats where the children run/walk the perimeter of the park by grade level. There will be a flu shot clinic this year as well.

    • Amy is chairing this event and needs a co-chair. Natalie Quinn is interested in helping Amy and learning more.

    • Please keep an eye out for the sign-up genius for volunteering at the walk. Brandon & Elyse will do this as part of the volunteer coordinator role. Marstal will send him the login for the PTA sign-up genius account and Matt will give him (along with Sadie & Dan Miller) access to the Google Drive. The link needs to be shared with Keri for inclusion in the Courier.

    • A brief discussion ensued about how information flows from the PTA to the broader school community, including clarification that the school website and event calendar is maintained by Keri, who is only .5 this year and the school does not have a social media presence. The PTA social media accounts are maintained by Lindsay Reiske and Corey China this year, and to have something posted, please add it to the Slack #socialmedia channel with your content/images. You can also ask to have images created if you need assistance with that. The PTA website is maintained by Laura Fegley (page build outs and redesigns)  and Marstal Aamodt (minor updates only). 

  • Grade Level Team visits

    • Volunteers Needed: PTA member(s) schedule meeting with team to answer questions, talk residencies, create relationship, provide point of contact

    • Annie Meister has already reached out to every teacher in her residency capacity, so she is happy to bundle the PTA info into those meetings. Sadie asked her to make sure they know to leverage her for any grant writing needs they have. She will also make sure they know to use the PTA request form for funds as needed. 

  • Site Council

    • A collection of school admins, parents and community members who meet monthly to discuss testing scores, the school's goals, the school improvement plan, etc who act as an advisory group for the principal. Robin Manthie is our site council liaison and chair. Site Council is looking for a parent rep from Kinder and 1st Grade for this year’s site council. 

  • Curriculum Night/Back to School Night

    • Thursday, Sept 26, 6-8pm - this is a school sponsored event so PTA has no responsibility here.

    • 5:30 - 6:00 pm - There is a plan for the PTA to offer a session for new to Kenwood families to address any questions they may have. We don’t have enough time to feed people during that block formally, so we have pivoted to snacks. We discussed getting a large supply of prepacked snacks for grab-and-go and if there are leftovers we can use them later. 

    • This is an adults only event so snacks should focus accordingly. 

    • Michelle will lead the 5:30 session, but would love other PTA parents to attend to help with questions and will ask Heidi about snacks. 

  • Fall Festival

    • Thursday, October 10 4:15-6pm (event starts after buses leave)  A community event, free to all families, typically held on the playground, but as we are getting a new playground this year, we will pivot to the park. The MPS culinary food truck will provide free food for all, there are s’mores,  music, a pumpkin patch, etc.

    • It will be necessary to collect the pumpkins at the Walser Farm on Sunday, October 6, 10am-12pm. More details to come.

    • Side note - The Walsers have retired from the Roots Dance Residency this year. 

    • Greta and Michelle are the fall festival co-chairs. Sadie is interested in joining the committee.

Other Business

  • Woodystock Concert Series: First concert tomorrow, Sept 5 at 6:30 pm by Kenwood Playground. Also scheduled for Thursday,  Sept Please post flyers to any community boards you are familiar with to socialize the event. This is a fundraiser supporting and driving community awareness of the outdoor classroom.

  • Lunch AND recess: volunteers needed

    • Kelly will continue to communicate out volunteer needs, and will hold an in person and a virtual info session for volunteers. Lunch is staffed by teachers this year for 20 mins, and then a 30 minute recess will be staffed by Kenwood employees and teachers will get their break then. We will also have Playworks on site on Wednesdays. The hope is that parents will sit down and talk to kids during lunch in addition to helping with opening items, etc. If you are helping at lunch you come early to help clean up from the previous lunch and then support lunch, to allow folks to move straight from lunch to recess if desired. 

  • Slack Clean Up is needed - combine General, Board and Community and any other channels. Marstal will reach out to Aidan to assist if she can’t combine channels with Admin access.

  • Fall town hall: committee needed

    • We tried a new meeting format last year, townhalls to deep dive on topics on different days and time to capture varying availability, with dinner and childcare provided to ease barriers to entry and got some new folks to attend. We want to continue with this idea this year, but include a speaker series (or just one guest speaker) as an attendee draw. Kelly Henry has offered to help find a speaker for our session and we would love ideas from any others for speaker ideas

    • Date is TBD, most likely November. Reach out to Michelle if you are interested in being on this committee

  • Social media co-chairs: Lindsay Reiske and Corey China (Mars, make sure Corey is on the Social Media channel)

  • Sadie is applying for a mini grant to potentially pay for each grade’s NA art residencies, ~$2k per teacher. She will submit that shortly and it will hopefully be applicable to this school year. Micheala is focused exclusively on funding for the Outdoor Classroom.

  • Kelly suggested making our Google Calendar such that people can subscribe for updates without having to read the courier, etc. For now, we keep our PTA website calendar up to date with events there for families to reference, and the school calendar up to date as well, but we should be able to do this with our new google suite features. 

  • Cider/Donut Truck - Greta will see if they can come to one of the Woodystock nights.

  • Adjourn

Upcoming Meetings and Events

Thursday, Sept 5 (9:30-10:30 am): Coffee & Kleenex

Thursday, Sept 5 (6:30-7:30 pm): Woodystock

Saturday, Sept 21 (9-11 am): Woody’s Welcome Walk

Thursday, Sept 26 (5:30-8 pm) Curriculum Night

Tuesday, Oct 1 (6-7:30 pm) - PTA Meeting

Sunday, Oct 6 (10-12) Pumpkin Picking at the Walser Farm 

Thursday, Oct 10 (4:15 - 6 pm): Fall Festival 

Attendees

In Person

Michelle Kemp, Matthew Decker, Meg Montgomery, Annie Meister, Brandon Colpitts, Sadie Rubin, Greta Schmitt, Kelly Henry, Natalie Quinn, Reinhardt Suarez, Emily Prager

Online

Marstal Aamodt

Laura Fegley
Next

October 2024 Meeting Minutes