North PAC Meeting Minutes: February 24, 2009

Attendees: Eight attendees.

Treasurer’s Report: $1,xxx in account. $340 specifically allocated for the Retreat in April.

Disco Ball: Jen created an info-folder for future Disco Balls. We did not break even this year. We were approximately $4 short. Hall School is having a family event on a Thursday evening in March (5th or 12th). We can sell our extra snacks/juice and cookbooks. ECFE outreach flyers/brochures will be available at the event also.

Recommendations for future Discos: Make more of an effort to make it a fundraiser. Charge more for snacks. Need more advertising. We need to discuss paying the DJ and the couple who set up and work the lights at another time.

ECFE Funding Calling Campaign: The E12 Education Budget Policy Division is looking for parents to testify about ECFE on Thursday, February 26, 2009 at 8:30AM in Room 112 at the State Capitol.

New Chairs: Sherri is grateful for the beautiful new chairs. They are well taken care of.

New Fundraiser: Wagner’s “My Garden” Spring Plant Sale Fundraiser. No money needed upfront. We would pay $15/kit. We can charge what we want and keep the rest as profit. Retail price is $28. We would charge $20 for a $5 profit per kit. If we sell 30, we would qualify for free delivery. Under 30, there is delivery fee or we can pick them up. Order forms and mini-posters are available from Wagner’s. Deadline is March 14th for preliminary order. April 10th deadline for submitting our final order. May 3rd first available date to pick up the plants. We would choose a day, likely Thursday, May 7, to pick up orders at Hall. S & A will co-chair the plant sale committee and be in contact with Linda and Wagner’s. More information can be found at: http://wagners.biz/

Easel Purchase: The easel Annette needs for Mona Moede costs about $300-400+ in the catalog. Annette will look into all options and look for the best deal. A. shared that he receives discounts from an office supply store that we could use.

Books the PAC purchases for use in the classroom: A. mentioned that we could look into getting a donation from a local business to pay for books, or get a grant from an organization.

Momcation/Retreat Committee: The committee needs more parents to join and meet on a Monday afternoon. Aqueelah expressed interest in joining the committee.

LAC Report from last Thursday night:
South PAC’s Cinco de Mayo and Vehicle Day events are coming up, as well as the End of the Year Picnic.

A South ECFE parent educator is asking for feedback, safety suggestions/precautions for a Kids-Fishing event. We briefly discussed the events’ need for life jackets, care with fishing hooks, limited casting or just let the children drop their line without casting.

The Budget Task Force found that there was not a clear way for parents to make payments for ECFE. Are parents to mail their checks to the main office, or take money in class? Some parents had checks returned because the semester was over before the office rec’d their check. The Budget Task Force decided that mail-in is the best way, and will take checks even if the term is over. If you can pay more, please do, but it will not be tax-deductible. Our PAC discussed the possibility of online payments and also parent educators asking for class payment in the form of a general announcement and gentle reminder to pay.

We need March, April and May volunteers to represent the North PAC at the LAC.

On-going business: For the last 5 minutes, we planned the next Parents Night Out – May 13th. Choice of restaurant was postponed for the time being. One option brought to the table was Bellanotte downtown. An ECFE parent’s spouse works there and brought a brochure to class.

Meeting Adjourned at 6:59pm.

North PAC Meeting Minutes: November 25, 2008

PAC Meeting

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November 25, 2008

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Minutes

Attendees: Ten members attended this meeting

NEW Agenda Items: Nothing to add

Minutes: No concerns

Scheduled Topics:
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PAC Meeting time discussion:
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J.L.: When the PAC meeting came up in Wed. class, someone brought up idea of meeting at a different time. Her issues were that at 6:00 it’s bed time so to leave the house this late isn’t a great option. Daytime meetings would work better. S.R.: Timing is tough. Daytime really doesn’t work in conjunction with class schedules. T.T.: what about people joining a committee. Committees work on a more ad hoc basis.

The group decided that we can consider possible day times for next year – when the school system is doing their planning for the year maybe we can also look at more times. Maybe every other meeting, we have a daytime meeting. Another option would be participating in a LAC meeting.
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M.N.: We should write up a policy that if you can’t make PAC meetings, there are other options such as committee/LAC. We don’t have representation from other classes, so we should have something.
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Outcome: Next year S.R. will look into the possibility of a day time meeting, but this will be challenging. In the meantime, individuals who want to be involved in PAC but who have scheduling problems should be encouraged to get involved in committee work or in attending the LAC meeting.

Website/Blog:
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MK: The website is up and running. Zac from Buy the Change is sending a link. TT will post minutes on the blogspot without names. We have an e-mail address. MK will include address and phone numbers of the two schools. TT will look into postings/message boards, etc. At the next meeting she’ll report ideas, etc.
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Regarding Buy the Change – the allocation of funds was tabled at the LAC. This will be determined at future meetings.

Retreat Survey:
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S.R. & M.N.: People did participate in the retreat survey. Just four people committed to go. That included one staff person. However, about 15 people said they would be interested but it was a bad weekend for them. About half said they could pay $85. About half said that the total amount was OK.
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An anonymous donor contributed $340 dollars to the retreat – said to keep it on account until we decide to do something about it.
Many thanks to the anonymous person!
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The group discussed other possibilities. Just among the PAC members there was consensus that a venue closer to the Twin Cities, perhaps even in the city would be much easier to schedule. In addition – the main reason for a retreat is to relax and spend quality time with other mothers. A hotel with a pool and a gathering place might work as well as a retreat center. It feels easier to leave your family for an over-night if you’re only a few minutes away. Several members will research possible hotel packages in the Twin Cities Metro area.
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New Chair purchases:
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The PAC OK’d the purchase of 10 chairs at a price of $450. This includes shipping. We also discussed selling the existing chairs. There was enough interest among PAC members to purchase all chairs at $5 per chair. This will reduce our price for new chairs to $40/chair. These chairs will be available to anyone attending the next PAC meeting. In the event we have more interest then we have chairs, we’ll draw names randomly.
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T.T. and J.L. will arrange purchase and subsequent pick-up of the old chairs.
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Other Wish-list items:
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The group asked the faculty members if there were other wish list items they would like to purchase for the class room.
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A.G. would like a flip-chart holder for Mona Moede. The existing flip chart at this location is so low to the ground that she has to kneel for her note taking.
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S.R. mentioned that we do need new toys, etc.
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Our ECFE budget is $1800 for the year through the school system. We’re probably down to $400.

Another instructor has a series of books she’s interested in for the library and for class.
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S.R. had a set she’d like to purchase for the children’s library.
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Ideally, each class segment would get about $80 – 100 to spend.
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In addition to the $450 for chairs, the PAC approved $200 for miscellaneous expenses listed above for the class room.
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We will do some further investigation of flip chart possibilities as this item is quite expensive.
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Franklin School Purchase:

S.R. this school was purchased by a charter school – this will impact our parking – S.R. doesn’t know that the impact is. She’ll keep us posted. This makes a moot point about using the allocated parking spaces.
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Cook Book Sales:
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J.L. will get a real number for the next meeting.
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Disco Ball:
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J was considering being the chair. M. N. has all the information available for her. S.R. has got the building permit set – it will be in the Gym – there’s an area for treats and a parking lot in the back. All that will be on the flyer. It’s being worked on and will be taken care of.
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A.G. brought a flyer from the American Income Life Association. They would like to have space on our table at the disco ball with their information – this is a no cost fingerprinting kit. The catch is that to get the fingerprinting kit, a family must agree to a sales call in their home. The group decided that this didn’t fit the spirit of our event. There are places that will supply finger printing information with no obligation.
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Committee: J.L. A.S. and S.R. will consult with the chair person as necessary. T.T. will volunteer to pick up snacks again this year.
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New parent’s night out:
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A.G. – what about a family bowl after the PAC meeting in January?
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We’ll talk about this at our December 16th meeting.

PAC Meeting Minutes - September 23, 2008

Treasurers Report
The Treasurer’s position was open prior to our meeting. Treasurer responsibilities include: Go to the bank with old treasurer to officially transfer signing duties. Take money and deposit. Write checks to reimburse. (PAC writes check for supplies that are approved by the group.) Boils down to three bills, reimbursement, depositing checks. There is no tax return or audit.
Jen volunteered and is the new treasurer! She knows the old treasurer and will coordinate hand-off of responsibilities. Thanks, Jen!
Report from LAC
There is no report as this is the first PAC meeting of the year year.
PAC members were encouraged to attend LAC meetings. Ideally we will have at least one representative at each LAC meeting. Celeste will go this month; M. will go in November. In November we will try to schedule one PAC member for each of the remaining months.
Maria extolled the win/win virtues of the LAC meetings: Free Child Care; free dinner for parents and kids; over an hour of time meeting with adults; no need to cook dinner that night!

OLD BUSINESS:
Cookbook
The cookbook was a very successful venture last year! We reviewed the current status of this project:
We have about 100 left.We sold enough to break even by the end of last year. Jen will research how many sold, etc. Mindy has some of that information and she will pass along to Jen. Anyone with cookbooks please return them. Celeste suggests that we have someone to market the cookbooks again. Could we possibly leave cookbooks in church/synagogue to sell?
A. volunteered to be our official "cookbook pusher". She will take on the project to make sure the cookbooks get sold. Thank you very much, A!
Disco Ball
Last year’s event was a big success and a lot of fun!
To review: An ECFE alumna has a brother who has a professional sound system complete with lights. He volunteered to put on an event similar to the spendy "Baby loves Disco" events.
Last year we held this event in the restless pre-dinner hour in the middle of winter. It was not a fundraiser. It was intended to raise ECFE awareness and provide a fun gathering for ECFE families.
Said brother has volunteered to do this event for us again this year.
We have two dates in mind: 2/7 or 1/31. Since the 31st is the Saturday before the Super Bowl, we selected 2/7 as the official date for the Disco Ball.
Before we start to micro manage we need to find a chair for this event. We’ll ask in classes. Jen will think about it.
Parking at Hall & Bike Rack
We want someone to interface with the city to get parking sites changed at Hall and also to add a bike rack. We’re trying to find out if bus lanes in front of Franklin could be parked in since the school is closed. Jen was told by the city that the district had made the decision not to make the lanes available for parking. Sherri will do some exploring and report back at the next meeting.

NEW BUSINESS
South PAC
They’re advertising; putting out a newsletter; and have even prepared an fancy flyer. We should advertise what we’re about, what we’re doing, what’s coming up but we feel that this doesn’t necessarily mean we should prepare an expensive flyer. Perhaps we should have a handout to be on the parent table in the ECFE class rooms. A. will have her creative husband look at the south side flyer and report back to the group.
Books
Sherri will be purchasing books for the next trimester. The cost will be about $200 this is about two sets of books.
The committee approved this expenditure.
At some point, Sherri would like to get some new wooden cube chairs. These are a very nice design and just the right size. Sherri would like to get about 6-8 chairs to replace the dilapidated chairs we currently have. We’ll talk abut this in a future meeting. There is a possibility we could find some other funding or chair donation source. This is a good project for our group to research.
Other Events This Year
Momcation
Maria has suggested a theme this year of Safe Kids and Healthy Moms. She talked to the group about the possibility of some sort of "Momcation". Perhaps an over night retreat, or simply an afternoon of pampering and good conversation. Sherri has a very extensive wellness background. We should take advantage of her knowledge. Maria has volunteered to do some research about what moms would like. She has prepared a brief survey which will be presented in ECFE classes.
Speaker Fundraiser:
Maria has done some research on how to recruit event speakers such as Amy Klobuchar or Suzie Orman. Perhaps in future meetings we could discuss having a fund raiser around a speaker of interest to the community.
Mom’s Lending Library
Therese mentioned that the Hall Elementary School ECFE parent room will now have a section for leisure-time books such as best sellers, novels, etc. These will be books that parents can check out for enjoyment. Parents can leave comments on the fly-leaf of the book about how they liked it, thereby creating a sort of Cliff’s Notes book club for these books. We all have books to share and we’re all looking for a good read in the five to ten free minutes we have every week.
Mom’s night out.
We discussed the Mom’s (and Dad’s) night out. The date will be November 11. The event will be held at Elsie’s. This is where we met last year and it worked well. M. will help Sherri get the word out.
Next Meeting: Our next meeting will be held on October 28th. All meetings are at Mona Moede.
Future Meetings:
November 25; January 27; February 24; March 24; April 28; May 26
The meeting was adjourned at 7:07 pm