Bryant PTSA Board Meeting Minutes – January 2018

Kathy Austin

January 9, 2018 7:00pm
Bryant Library

Welcome and Introductions,Kim Love & Julie Orhazda

Approve December Meeting Minutes
Correction needs to be made to list the last Wednesday for the monthly fundraising meeting.

Officer/Standing Committee Reports

  1. Treasurer’s Report, Brita Willis
    • Not much spending this month, a lot of self-starting clubs (Chess, Drama)
    • Looking for two volunteers to help with mid-year financial review coming up in Feb.
      Tammy will contact potential volunteers with a blurb written about volunteer help needed.
  2. Legislative Report, Shelley Prosise & Jean Charette
    • Nothing to report today- new resolutions are being worked on and should have more info next month.
    • Seattle Council is having general meeting Feb. 5th, will have PTSA reps there. District Budget Director will be present at that meeting.
  3. Fundraising Team Report, Leeann Huntington & Sara Fenzl
    • Continued with monthly meetings, finalized format of Google doc that includes events and communication around events. Idea is to stagger messaging of different events. Ideas welcome about how to promote usage of Google doc. This is to be used by committees that are selling things/asking for volunteers/etc. Board drop-box may be best suppository or use dropbox.
  4. Bryant Leadership Team, Kim Love
    • Discussed family engagement and were asked to narrow focus on two projects. Ideas include:
      • Day before school starts school-wide initiative for informal meet and greet to build relationships and assuage nerves about school starting. Focus on new families. This would be a joint PTSA/Building event and could replace 1st Day Tea, but as a more casual and fun way to engage families. This is still in early planning stages and yet to be discussed with staff. Idea to minimize time on teachers. Next steps are to form a small group to talk in more detail with teachers about what this would look like.
      • Another idea is to entrust students in helping and supporting each other
      • Training Video concept, with possible student involvement.
  5. Principal’s Report, Dan Sanger
    • Receieved early budget report today at District Office that was quite positive!
    • Budget will be used to channel into high poverty schools/free and reduced lunch, as well as literacy support and PTA’s help in maintaining Reading Specialist position. Talk of reducing student-teacher ratio.
    • Enrollment will still use conservative formula in providing staffing, however above news makes this prospect much more bearable.
    • Article in NYT sited Seattle School District as 3rd highest in student growth in K-3 in the USA.
    • CSIP (comprehensive site improvement plan) will be looked a the end of this year for the following year, which is a difference from previous years when this plan was looked at in the beginning of current school year.

Special Committee Reports
None

Special Orders
None

New Business                                                                          

  1. Teacher Assessment Days, Connie Bernard, Amy Alphin
    • Collaborative Literacy Leaders Ms. Bernard and Ms. Alphin reported on the new comprehensive literature program. District also adopted a K-5reading assessment, which is significant for equity in the district. This year’s assessment is new and much longer than previous years…
    • Takes bout 20-25 minutes per student per book for assessment.  Each kids needs to read 3-5 books most likely. Ms. Bernard walked us through what an assessment is like and why it takes a long time to conduct each assessment.
    • Assessment takes longer, but benefits are many. Wonderful to work with a kid 1:1. Assessments occur 2-3x/year to show growth, more so for students of concern, and in-depth assessments allow for a deeper understanding of where a student is.
    • Assessment data is also used for small reading group placements in K-2.
    • Currently teachers have used 20 full sub days for assessments: 4055.25- we have four days left (per treasurer) for the year. Survey sent out asking how much more time teachers feel they need for the year. 9 teachers said 1 year, 10 teachers said 2 more days, 2 teachers said more than 2 days would be needed.
    • Asking for 25 teachers to each have one more sub day. (25 days). =  $5500. For 37 days (1.5days per teacher) =  $8140.
    • Motion to increase sub time to $8200. Seconded and motion passed.
  2. PCC Gift Card, Kim Love
    • Two weeks ago PCC gave us $150. What to do with the money?
      • Table discussion and come back to next PTSA meeting with ideas. Vote on ideas at next meeting
  3. Future of Book Fair, Anne Aliverti
    • Ideal situation would be one new book per year per kid in library each year. (10, 200)
    • We actually get $3500 (3k from PTA/500 from Bryant). Also need to replace classics that are aging out.
    • Book fair profits have decreased dramatically
    • Other funding sources include Donors Choose and Graphic Novels Club – both sources are not necessarily constant and reliable.
    • May need to move away from the book fair. Not worth the money we are making.
    • Request for sub-committee on how we can think about funding in the future.
    • Ideas include read-a-thon/author event at UW Bookstore, etc./Friends of the Library
    • Please let Anne Aliverti know if you are interested in the sub-committee.
    • Book Fair to be cancelled for the future with idea to replace with other ideas.
  4. Bank deposit slips & endorsement stamps (8:05-8:10)   Nelly Goodnoe
    • No need for approval, requesting carbon copy deposit slips.

Announcements:

Kids and Race, 1/22/17 at Wedgwood Elementary

February Board Meeting 2/13/17
7pm meeting, 7:30 Bullying Speaker (order agenda to interest parents)
Request will be put into LASER to cover childcare

Blast: Need Volunteer Coordinator and Raffle Basket Leads