Hello and Welcome back Tigers & Tiger Parents!
From your Fundraising team
Aug. 14, 2008
Hello! We wanted to take a moment and introduce ourselves and answer some common questions about fundraising at Mark Twain. Our names are Michele Hanna and Jennifer Engerman and we are the fundraising co chairwomen for Mark Twain this year. We are looking forward to a year of hard work and good fun!!
Common Question #1—Why, oh why, do we have these fundraising events? Doesn’t the school district have money for us? What about our taxes?? Well, just to clear this one up, our teachers are NOT paid like Carmelo Anthony and our school does not make money like the Jonas Brothers do! The tax money we receive goes toward staffing and basic building upkeep. Extra, cool stuff comes to us in many ways that you and your neighbors and family help fund! Take a look at question #2 to see how we actually spend this money to improve our school and help our kids. We invite your participation in at least one of our fundraising activities this year. Additionally, we welcome you to volunteer to help with one of our events! It’s a great opportunity to help improve our school for your child and a fun way to meet new people.
Common Question #2—Where, EXACTLY, is my money going?? The Parent Teacher Organization(PTO)—made up of teachers and parents, votes on ways to spend the money. Typically, it’s to help our school in many areas where our funding is lacking or simply non-existent from the district. Last year, our Twain community raised $20,000! Here are some of the neat things that the team voted on getting to support our school this year:
• a .3 FTE teacher salary to help keep class sizes smaller and more manageable;
• a new, traveling laptop cart with 15 laptop computers that can roam from classroom to classroom!
• new curtains for the gym/cafeteria;
• lighting in the hallways and an upgraded teachers lounge;
• we allocated funds to Mrs. T to add to her ‘new playground equipment’ budget;
• classroom support budgets for teachers, Halloween/Valentines Day parties and the BBQ, etc.
Common Question #3—It seems like every time I turn around, there is ANOTHER fundraiser? Why so many? As the saying goes, “different strokes, for different folks.” Our goal is to provide a variety of opportunities for your participation--no one can participate in everything—and we surely don’t expect you to! What you may think is fun and worthwhile may not be to someone else. We have so many good ideas in the hopper that we believe that you will find at least one of our programs worthy of your time and hard earned money. And, if you have any ideas we would love to have you come to a meeting and share them so we can add them to the list!
Common Question #4—So, what are we doing this year?? New things as well as some fun and profitable events are part of our short list:
Ongoing programs will be monthly grocery store certificates-King Soopers, Sunflower, Albertson’s and more and on-hand gift card sales for a variety of merchants including: Starbucks, Chipotle, Barnes & Noble & The Gap Companies (for back to school shopping!). If these don’t meet your needs, we have a huge list of participating retailers/restaurants. Please see our gift card chair-woman, Christy Price for more details! And during the holidays we have a program for holiday gift card sales. We’ll also have Spirit Wear available for purchase throughout the year. Lastly, we are working on relationships with multiple Restaurants to schedule Restaurant Nights, so you can eat at your favorite local spot while still supporting your favorite Elementary school! We’ll have a calendar for that in place soon.
Fall Fundraisers include: E-Book sales (awesome coupons & prizes for our kids), Donation Drive and a Fall Family Event.
Spring Fundraisers: Our largest and most important fundraiser of the year is our Silent Auction. We need help in big ways and small to put this event on. We welcome all comers to help us with this year’s event so if you are interested in helping out, please sign up in any area(s) you’d like to help with. This event is scheduled for April and is a ton of fun for our Twain Parents!! Then we have the Scholastic Book Fair during the week of Spring Parent/Teacher Conferences.
That is a lot to keep track of so, to stay in the loop, please check our info under the News & Announcements link on the Twain website www.twain.littletonpublicschools.net or contact us at: twainfundraising@gmail.com
Thanks for your time and support—YOU are what helps make this school such a great place to learn and work!
Sincerely--Michele Hanna & Jennifer Engerman