February Meeting Notes

Meeting Date: February 4, 2025 @ 6:15pm
Attendees:  Hien Larson, Julia Worster, Laurie Kuntz, Brandy Christensen, Kate Lord, Jill Cox, Hilda Vazquez, Kate Parkhill, Kristin Cooksey, Nicole Sachse, Dyan Johnson.
Welcome & Intro: Brandy Christensen motioned to approve the minutes from January 2025. Nicole Sachse seconded. The motion passed without dissent.  
Treasurer’s Report & Budget Review: There have not been many changes in the last month. The check for the sponsorship banners was cashed. Meg Lally cashed her grant check. The Touchdown Tamales fundraiser total is currently sitting at $225. 
Principal’s Update: The February 7th dance has been postponed to February 21st due to possible inclement weather. The staff is busy planning for an upcoming Work Habits celebration on the morning of February 21st. Replaces the pre-Covid honors breakfasts, acknowledging the roughly 150 students with all 3s in work habits for Trimester 1. In the future, the goal is to have one at the end of each trimester. The administration is looking for PTO/parent support in providing breakfast (coffee, OJ, fruit, and baked goods) for the event. They suggested a SignUp Genius for parents to bring an item, as it’s done at the high school. Laurie and Kate suggested that PTO cater the event with Costco items instead. We will add a line item to the budget for these going forward. Hien said that StuCo would like PTO support in ordering sweatshirts for their members. She will provide Laurie and Brandy with an invoice, and the money will come out of the StuCo grant line in the budget. Hien asked for more Cougar Pride gift cards. Laurie will buy them and deliver them to school this week.
Sixth-Grade Outreach: Nicole presented her revised draft. Megan is a graphic designer and will help make the flyer pretty. Off to a very good start! We discussed a few tweaks. Brandy and Nicole will keep it moving forward.
Touchdown Tamales: Donations have been very slow this year. Hien sent out a reminder email on Tuesday. Laurie hopes we’ll get to at least $400 to break even. Discussed plans for tamale pickup/delivery if there is a snow day on Friday. Laurie offered to pick them up from Rosa and either deliver them to winners or have winners pick them up in one or two central locations in town. TBD, depending on the weather.
Open House/Silent Auction/Kermes Dinner:  We’ll move the auction forward a week and end it the day after Open House. So the new (tentative) dates are Friday, April 25 to Friday, May 2nd. Kate will pull together an exported list of last year’s items to see which were most popular. The target in this year’s budget is $5,000; we did $9,400 last year on 87 items. Laurie will update the letter to parents and ensure that the Google Drive is accessible so we can start dividing up the contact list. We should be able to dupe last year’s BiddingOwl site, but Sarah Maile offered to help with this as well. We need to start collecting items ASAP. Hilda will keep us posted on how we can support ELAC and let us know when their April meeting will occur.
8th Grade Promotion: Initial info meeting went well with 10 in attendance and two more who sent their names in but couldn’t attend. Kate Parkhill and Kristin Baird offered to head up the committee. Laurie will share the Google Drive with them. Erica Daniel offered to start researching food options. Cheryl Luther offered to try to find sponsors/donors. Hien Larson explained why she’d prefer we skip the LED dance floor this year. Kate and Kristin will take the planning from here.
Meeting adjourned.