Barton Hills Elementary 2015-2016 PTA

Executive Board Meeting Minutes

October 13, 2015

Members Present: Kati Achtermann, Nicole Truelock, Meredith Weiss, Bob Gillett, Melanie Gantt, Stacey Gardner, Sean Moran, Becky Pursley, Aaron Mitchamore, Marit Weisenberg, April Smith, Alexia Rodriguez, April Alejandro, Liz Mckay, Audriana Cuellar, Susan Chopra

Public Commentary: Alexia Rodriguez

Alexia is interested in beginning a Mindfulness Club at BHE. Mindfulness is associated with meditation and is secular. Alexia would like to start with a small after school club, with parent participation, and then gauge the interest level. Ms. White is interested in sponsoring the club. The club would meet once a week in one classroom and if interest was greater, more classrooms would be needed; each group could be 12-15 kids and the meetings would last 30 minutes at the most. Alexia will forward a document about mindfulness for the PTA to review. The several non-profits have curriculum that they would probably follow to train the parent volunteers.

Eventually, if this were to be implemented into the school day it would be for 3-4 minutes at a time—for instance, at the beginning of the day and after lunch. There would be training involved and perhaps the PTA could sponsor that. Other schools use this with SEL, which is already in our classrooms.

Nicole Truelock called the meeting to order at 6:45 pm.

Announcements

Wendy Chennault could not be here tonight due to a reaction to food; Gloria Williamson is being moved from hospital to recovery facility.

Minutes were approved by Stacey and seconded by Meredith.

ACPTA Report

Four times a year the vertical team meets for discussion and at the last meeting was addressing how to market our vertical team. We have a diverse team, so how do we let people know what it has to offer? The majority of the team feeds directly to Austin high (some of Small Middle School splits and goes to Bowie HS, not Austin HS). Amy Taylor (principal at Austin High) will make a presentation at principal’s coffee here on Friday, October 16—she has a great vision and wants to re-design part of the school. There is talk of a new south school high school, which would be another draw away from our vertical team and Austin High. We need to make sure that we keep advertising what our vertical team has to offer. Principal’s coffee will be from 7:50-8:30 on Friday, October 16.

Susan Chopra is helping out with website; Audriana Cuellar is the new ACPTA rep.

Principal’s Report

ACL was a huge success! The 6th grade choir was invited to perform with 3 Canadian Tenors in three weeks at ACL live at the Moody Theater. There is a new school zone on Homedale behind school—Tara Pitt was instrumental in getting this accomplished and had to work with the city to make it happen. This is the first step in getting sidewalks up on Homedale Drive. The playground mural is amazing!! It is still being finished. This week is Take Your Parent to Lunch Week—watermelon and jicama will be sampled on Wednesday. Mr. Trainor has resigned his position due to a family situation. Kati will work out a replacement for him. Rachel Summer is the new ½ time reading specialist.

Becky Pursley brought a vintage BHE hat to see if we want to market it sometime.

Carnival

This week the carnival newsletter will be distributed and it will be mainly about family sponsorships. Wristband sales will be the same. There will be 4 inflatables at carnival; some room changes will occur. Wristbands will be given to all teachers. Others can purchase a $25 all-inclusive wristband, $10 meal ticket and perhaps $5 drinks ticket. Some of the sales can be done online.

Annual Fund/Membership

We’ve collected $15K so far. We have 90 members.

Committee Reports

The first cultural arts show is on Thursday and will be Arsene Dupin, a mime and magician.

Parents are welcome to attend the performances. Suzie also secured Miss Wheelchair Texas for career day. Greenworks chair is gung-ho! Denny Biggs and his partner have donated $1500 of their own money for the front of the school and have given their portion of the PTA budget to the gardening groups at school. Denny would like to increase the budget of Greenworks next year. The PTA would like Denny to come to an executive board meeting and share his vision (5 years?), with a budget, so the PTA knows how much money to allot for Greenworks.

Enrichment Programs

Enrichment programs are OK, but it has been tough to get parent volunteers. Some kids had to be turned kids down for programs. The PTA may need to revisit how these programs are run and maybe consider only programs for which parents pay. Perhaps the programs offered need to change as well. For instance, maybe a programming club would be of interest and robotics could be offered one semester and programming one semester.

President’s Report

The owner of Fit Austin, who wants to target the BHE community as a base for her services, has approached Nicole. If parents purchased a one-month membership, they would get a discount and then for the first three months Fit Austin would give 10% back to PTA. If this is a viable fund-raising opportunity, should we solicit more from other businesses? Does that show that the PTA endorses these companies? They may see us as a captive audience and then want us to continually send information home about their companies—Kati turns these “offers” down weekly. Perhaps Nicole can tell Fit Austin to approach the carnival chairs and/or consider reaching out at our Wellness Fair.

There is a new Marathon Kids program and is now underwritten by Nike. Their support allows kids from grades 1-6 to count their miles and receive t-shirts. Ms. Perry wonders about the PTA buying t-shirts for kindergartners only since they are not counted in the overall Marathon Kids program. This would be a budget item for one grade level only, not school wide, so the PTA will have to consider the implications. One option is to see if there is enough savings from the t-shirt budget overall that the surplus covers the cost of t-shirts for kindergarteners. The PTA voted to provide the t-shirts for kindergarteners.

Treasurer’s Report

We are about halfway to meeting our budgeted goal. Carnival donations are a little low, but it is a week later this year. Mr. Tabone got $1K; this is an exception. He needed a camera lens for ACL, but it will be put to use with the whole school while filming other performances throughout the year. He spent about $1800 for the camera lens and would like the PTA to consider reimbursing him for the full amount. The PTA still has $5500 carried forward from last year that we could consider using for Mr. Tabone’s purchase. This will have to be kept equal and applied to art and gym, too. The PTA may consider allowing teachers to save their PTA budgeted money for 2-3 years to buy bigger items and not small stuff year after year. We need to buy the library furniture—we’ve been carrying that for a couple of years now. Nicole got a bill for the t-shirts and we will see a savings on them this year.

PTA Bylaws

The PTA needs to amend the bylaws so that a minimum quorum is 11, instead of 10. Fiscal year is July 1-June 30 (not June 1-May 31). Nicole moves to change quorum and change fiscal year. The executive committee passed this motion.

New Business

Aaron wonders if we have considered the AV needs of the school. TVs are not used very often and are quite old. The 2013 bond provides for presentation systems for classrooms. The first part of the bond was for the classroom stations, such as mobile devices and individual devices. The mobile devices will be deployed in January and the presentation stations much later—maybe next year.

The meeting was adjourned at 7:41.