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Minutes
St. Thomas Preschool Advisory Board Meeting
September 9, 2009
The Saint Thomas Advisory Board Meeting was called to order 12:30 p.m. at the St. Thomas Church Nursery.
Present: Michelle Garmon, Dusty Murphy, Nancy Ruther, Amy Huether, Pamela Dion, Lorie Garcia, Tracy Curtin, Jennifer Peterson, Julie Nentl, Debbie Brooks, Gabriella Carrillo, Jennifer Toole.
Opening Prayer was said by Pamela Dion.
President’s Report
•Pam welcomed everyone to the board and sent the message that she would like us to look at the big picture of being advisory board members; we are working for the betterment of our school and keeping it not only competitive with other schools but to maintain it being the best preschool.
•Each board member was briefly introduced by Pam and then each introduced herself.
•Pam lead an open discussion on the following topics:
School Survey-overviewed the results. This was the best response to the survey in years due to the online format. Thanks to Nancy Ruther for developing the questions and entering the survey on line.
Social Events-We need to look at what is working and what is not working in our community. Parent Coffee attendance is low and so we will need to brainstorm ideas on how to get more parents involved. Also, some parents have voiced moving the School Supply Drive for St. Charles school to September while school supplies are on sale. The board discussed that the supplies are for the St. Charles summer program and St. Thomas doesn’t have room to store the supplies throughout the year.
Diocese Workshop- Pamela and Amy will be attending the workshop on September 26, 2009. Michelle and Dusty will be attending training and cannot attend the Diocese meeting but it is important to have St. Thomas attendance due to the subject matter of grant writing.
Staff attendance at board meetings-Pamela expressed, and it was in agreement with board members, that she would like to see more staff at the board meetings. Their input and ideas are important to making St. Thomas the best it can be.
Director’s Report
Summer Camp
•The board needs to discuss if it is beneficial to keep the summer camp program going. Due to the economy, enrollment was down this summer, forcing Michelle to cut the amount of staff members.
•Julie offered that she heard families want a full-time, all summer camp to accommodate working parents.
•Benefits are highly costly and Michelle is not willing to take them away from staff to save money. The board will need to look into different ways to draw families into the program. Dusty is open to any and all ideas.
Snacks
•There has been positive feedback on the changes of families bringing snack instead of it being supplied by the school. By doing this, we save an estimated $7,000 which could be used to increase teacher salary.
Committee Reports
Fundraising
Tracy Curtin, Jennifer Peterson, and Julie Nentl
•Committee met and decided on a Super Hero theme where guest come dressed as their favorite super hero or one they created.
•The date is set for February 6, 2010 but Pamela asked if we could move it up a week to January 30th due to her commitment to another event at her children’s school. Members of the board felt that a later date would not be best for fundraising due to other auctions in town and Tracy felt that one more week would be helpful. It was decided that the Fundraising committee would discuss it and make a decision.
•Auction Committee will meet the 1st Wed. of each month in the Nursery with the first meeting on September 16th.
Community Service
Jennifer Toole
•St. Thomas will partner with St. Jude’s again for the Trike-a-thon. The event will be held during the fall carnival at school during school hours on October 30th. Jennifer discussed ways of making it more organized and getting families to pledge money for the event.
Treasurer
•The budget was distributed and was discussed that most of it went mostly towards bills and teacher raises.
•The annual fundraiser is a big part of how our budget runs so we are hoping for a good turn out for the event in February.
The next board meeting will be held on Thursday, October 8th at 12:30 p.m. in the church nursery.
Minutes Respectfully submitted,
Debbie Brooks