Saturday Open Thread
From Soup for Teachers:
Super-duper proud of my wonderful PTA for voting to donate 6% of our annual budget to a PTA or school community with less resources than us. Humbled and inspired by the Concord community, and so grateful to be a part of it.
Last batch of gift cards are ready to go out. We were able to give $5175 worth of Safeway gift cards to Louisa Boren STEM K-8 and Roxhill Elementary School students in need, split between Thanksgiving and Winter Breaks! Thank you to everyone who donated! I never imagined #NoHungryKids would have been this successful!
Parents working for other parents so that we have better schools and successful students.
Super-duper proud of my wonderful PTA for voting to donate 6% of our annual budget to a PTA or school community with less resources than us. Humbled and inspired by the Concord community, and so grateful to be a part of it.
Last batch of gift cards are ready to go out. We were able to give $5175 worth of Safeway gift cards to Louisa Boren STEM K-8 and Roxhill Elementary School students in need, split between Thanksgiving and Winter Breaks! Thank you to everyone who donated! I never imagined #NoHungryKids would have been this successful!
Parents working for other parents so that we have better schools and successful students.
Skype
a Scientist is a free program that connects classrooms (and other
groups) with scientists for 30-60 min. Q&A sessions about the
scientist's work or life as a scientist!
We are now enrolling the Spring 2018 semester so please tell your
scientist friends, k-12 teachers, and leaders of community groups that
may want to skype with a scientist in 2018! Check it out at
Comments
--Share Funds
-Undecided
Preventing starvation is always the right thing to do. But are PTSAs the best organizations to accomplish this? No.
Former Bagley
-Pragmtic Xennial
Frazzzled Parent- Here's what the 17-18 PTA Budget looks like at Thornton Creek. All schools could benefit from enrichments like these- in particular the academic assistants in the classrooms and a counselor. But many SPS schools do not have the ability to fundraise to this extent. PTA funds wouldn't be used to pay for human services but for the same things that schools like these are using funds for. It shocks me that the district allowed Laurelhurst to save a teacher cut because the PTA was able to raise funds in 2 days- where's the equity in that? All schools could benefit from smaller class sizes or classes with academic assistants, but it seems only the ones that have PTA's with money can take advantage of this. My school had to to take a staff cut just to keep a counselor and our free and reduced lunch population is almost 70%.
Academic assistants $94k
Counselor $54k
Choral and instrumental music $49k
Site Council admin $21k
3rd/4th/5th grade literacy support $13k
Scholarship $12k
Expedition support $12k
Library/art/PE $6.5k
Other $15k
Total budget $276.5k
-Share Funds
Pro-pta
On the face of it it sounds fair and just, but I think it will only stoke the resentment already displayed against high dollar schools.
Schools without their own PTSA money will no doubt get used to the largesse and if it dries up or diminishes, it may get ugly.
just sayin'
The amount of funding for schools with low to no fundraising dollars could certainly be erratic from year to year. That's okay for one-off things like supplies but not for funding enrichment programs.
photon