Hunt Middle School Blog - Sept 18, 2016

 

Hunt Blog - Sept 18, 2016

 

  

We held our first PTO Meeting!

Here are the meeting minutes:


September PTO Meeting Minutes

September 15, 2016

President’s Report – Paula Henry

Welcome to all parents! There are many opportunities to join the Board. Open positions exist for Treasurer, Secretary, and Blogger. This is also Paula’s last year as President. Parents of 6th and 7th graders are encouraged to step up to fill these positions, so that training can occur during the school year to ensure a smooth transition in May.

Contact Paula at the HuntMiddleSchool@gmail.com if you would like more information.

There are many opportunities to help out with fundraising this year! Carol McCleary is leading the campaign for the new HMS logo t-shirts. Order forms went out today with all students, with an order deadline of Friday 9/23. We will place one order for all pre-orders and an inventory to sell at the school store. We will look at a way to order directly from the HMS website in the future. This is a great fundraising opportunity and a great way to show our school spirit. Charles Dabritz and the student council will oversee sales in school through the HMS store. We plan to sell the shirts at all school events.

We will summarize all past fundraisers and post on the blog to see if anyone is interested in heading them up. Our focus this year will be online fundraising, such as Donors Choose, Giving Board, PayPal, Pay it Forward, or others. These have high returns with minimal effort. We are looking for volunteers to step forward to look at other schools in the District who have been successful with online fundraising. If interested, please contact the PTO at the email address above. Due to the level of work involved, we will not hold a wrapping paper fundraiser this year.

There is community support for the annual holiday wreath sale. This also is a big project that requires volunteers to make it happen. Paula will send all information to Jen L’Ecuyer who is willing to take a look at it. She also volunteered to contact CP Smith about their Paypal fundraiser.

The Shutterfly fundraiser is ongoing. Jen will write up information on how it works and we will post on the blog. Michelle will post it also on the HMS site. (We get 13% of all sales through our link.)

Informational fliers about the PTO are available in the office.

 

Treasurer’s Report –

Paula Henry (looking to fill Treasurer opening!)

The final 2015-2016 budget versus actual was reviewed. Overall, we raised $3,842 in fundraising, and funded $3,018 in school events. Our account balance for beginning of the 2016-2017 school year is $7,720. Of this $3,874 is available to fund school events. At our October meeting, we will vote on the school events that we want to put into the budget to fund. The budget report includes many events the PTO has funded in the past. We targeted $5,000 in fundraising income for the school year.

Principal’s Report – Len Phelan

Schedules - There have been changes made to the schedule this year, making it more flexible and versatile. New Math and Reading support is now offered as well as Math enrichment. Many students are taking advantage of this instruction. Unified Arts are now offered every other day for an entire semester, alternating between two choices. Most students will have all 4 over the course of the year (2 at a time each semester).

iPads - iPad student signups started today. Many changes have been implemented this year as a result of parent feedback. There will be enhanced monitoring and filtering, more administrative control, with more purposeful learning taking place. There will no longer be student Apple IDs and no more app store, although students can still access the web, which is important for many of our families. Grades 7-8 will be getting their devices in about one week. The 6th grade rollout will happen soon after! All students have recently completed a Digital Citizenship curriculum, offered by Val Lodish and Charles Dabritz.

Canvas - A letter will be sent out soon about signing up for Canvas. All teachers are using Canvas for classwork (assignments and grades). We are starting year 2 with Canvas, and we no longer use Jupiter Grades. Canvas updates are ongoing.

Fall sports are underway! More students are needed for field hockey and cross country. Any student interested in these sports should contact Mr. Pecor, the Athletic Director.

New Faces!

Our new Assistant Principal, Maddie, is up and running. Gabe Diaz, former HMS Para, is the new Coordinator for the Teen Center at the Miller Center, run after school. Charles Dabritz, our former Librarian and new Phoenix Social Studies teacher, is the Student Council Advisor this year.

Two great opening Assemblies were held the first week of school, with appropriate grade-focused themes. Be sure to check out the school calendar on the website for all events. School dances are posted.

The annual Fall Harvest Dinner is set for October 27th. This is a great school community event that needs lots of volunteers. The PTO held a movie raffle last year, and will consider doing one again. Len will talk to the teams about doing a “team basket” raffle.

Our next meeting is Thursday, October 20th at 6:30pm

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6th grade parents!

Get involved and make a difference! We especially welcome parents of 6th grade students.

The PTO needs your help in many ways. Come and get involved.

Email the PTO at huntmiddleschool@gmail.com


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Our Annual Fall Harvest Dinner Approaches!

 

October 27th. This is a wonderful community event with parents and students welcome. Great food, wonderful music and everyone being involved. If you haven't attended before, you are going to love this event. If you're new to the school and would like to meet some new people & help out, let us know via email.

 

We need help setting up, serving meals, & handing out ice cream.

 

This would be a great way to meet the teachers in a casual setting along with parents of your students.

 

The food is wonderful and the kids put a lot of work decorating for this night each year.

 

We hope you'll join us. Put it on your calendar now!

 

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