All,

Where has the fall gone?! I hope you all enjoyed a peaceful and safe Thanksgiving with your families. I know many Mt. View families have a parent deployed overseas with the U.S. military and I join you in waiting for their safe return.

PTA is only as strong as its volunteer base and membership. Thank you so much if you have been able to join PTA, volunteer at events or both! But we frankly need more support and involvement if we are going to succeed in making a difference at Mt. View. The number of people actively supporting PTA right now is very small.

Our fundraising efforts each year allow us to help fill in needs for the students, whether it’s technology for teachers, resources and books for kids, or programs and events. So thanks very much for supporting the fall and spring fundraisers each year. Sure, we can write a check for many things without much effort on your part. But I’m hearing over and over again that you and other Mt. View parents value the family events, especially our hugely popular Fun Nights.

We would love to have more of these events and expand on them, to have pizza parties or other dinner socials, maybe a father/daughter dance or Muffins with Mom… Well, we will not be able to have these events in 2010 if we do not get additional support and volunteers. In particular, we need one or two people to step forward in order to help coordinate the Fun Nights or any other event you want PTA to host. There are many details to this type of event but they are manageable with the right amount of help! Think about what you can do and then contact me.

What would it take for you to attend the January meeting? Think about it and put this date on your calendar:

Tuesday, January 12th – 6:30-7:30 p.m. (Mt. View library)

I know many of you have obligations outside of Mt. View and PTA. I know that many of you are single-parent households or have a parent deployed overseas. But what would it take for you to be involved with PTA in some small way? Did you know that you can bring your children to our meetings? Absolutely! We don’t currently have “day care” provided during meetings but if we have a few parents or teenagers available to corral the children for an hour… voila! Think about how you can help solve our “day care dilemma”!

Please join us in January so you can see how your PTA works and so I can greet and thank you personally!

Take care,
Brian Morgan
Mt. View PTA President 2009-2010
360-970-9513 (c)

What are your thoughts, suggestions?

What feedback do you have about PTA, positive or negative? We can use your constructive criticism as much as your kudos throughout the year. We are trying to communicate with you and the rest of Mt. View by as many methods as possible. We keep the website current, update our Facebook profile frequently, send out emails about three times a month and send out a monthly newsletter. I hope that at least some of these communication tools work for you! If you want to be added to the PTA email distribution list, let me know!

Take care,

Brian Morgan

Mt. View PTA President 2009-2010

360-970-9513 (c)

November meeting minutes posted

Here are your November meeting minutes, courtesy of Secretary Shawn Smith. It's a large Adobe document (almost 4MB) due to the many reports and attachments. Please let me know if you have trouble opening or viewing the minutes.

Brian Morgan
PTA President 2009-2010

360-970-9513

Adopt-a-road - who is going to support?

Well, we now know that a two-person crew can clean the debris from our 0.5-mile stretch of 37th Avenue in about 1.25 hours! So what are you waiting for? Are you able to volunteer for our 3rd installment of trash pickup? Imagine how easy it would be for a crew of four motivated volunteers!

When we polled the membership over the summer, you overwhelmingly felt that signing on with the city's Adopt-a-road program was the way to go. So now is the time to sign up and show your support!

What can you do? Two things - consider whether you can help coordinate the monthly clean-up days and contact me to suggest our third clean-up day. We need to be out there about every four weeks so that the trash doesn't get out of hand. After all, our name is on the sign and we don't want drivers to see our section of roadway looking trashy! Obviously, designating the day myself is running up against too many schedule conflicts for our volunteers. So now I would like your suggestions, please!

Call or email with your thoughts and suggestions.

Thanks!
Brian Morgan (360-970-9513)
Mt. View PTA President 2009-2010

Roadside clean-up tomorrow - time change

Since no one has RSVP'd to join me and Laura for roadside clean-up tomorrow, we are moving the time to 11 a.m. Feel free to join us then! We'll still be meeting at Mt. View, in the drop-off parking lot. Then it'll be off to College and 37th for our 0.5-mile of road!

11 a.m. tomorrow (Saturday the 14th) - see you there!

- Brian
360-970-9513

From the Superintendent

November 13, 2009

Greetings and Happy Friday,

Last night I was so grateful to be amongst friends, staff and colleagues who provided me and my wife Rana with such a warm community reception. Thank you to the Board and others who coordinated the event and for the kind words shared by many of you. As Rana and I have said repeatedly, we are so grateful to be living in Lacey. The quality of life here is so wonderful and every day we meet new people who make us feel very welcome in our new home.

I realize that November is traditionally a time for giving thanks. It makes my heart feel good to know that our staff and community are doing so much to help fill the buckets of others and help families and students in need: Lacey K-Club is having a food drive; Charlie's Safari is hosting a Thanksgiving dinner for some of our families; the District Office is collecting "feather" donations to buy gift cards to help with Thanksgiving dinners for 10 district families, South Bay's special education families are doing a holiday dinner, Lydia Hawk and Mountain View schools collected over 7,000 cans of food for the Thurston County Food Bank - and the list goes on.

In the spirit of giving, I am very excited to announce that we are helping lead a new membership drive to support the very local North Thurston Education Foundation . This volunteer-run organization directly supports our students, schools and teachers through a series of learning grants, emergency funds for needs and scholarships. Since 1989 this volunteer organization has given more than $360,000 to help enhance educational opportunities for our students and teachers. I encourage you to consider helping us make an easy 100 percent participation goal to help directly support our students in need. If everyone gave just $1 a month, that would be almost $20,000 to help students . If you are considering donating to NTEF, we recommend you do so directly, through a cash donation or p ayroll deduction. Donations envelopes were sent to all the schools along with some informational brochures for staff rooms. This drive will last through December 4. To learn more about NTEF visit their website at www.ntef.org . Building principals, school counselors and the Student and Staff Support Department (360-412-4466) work with families in need to connect them with needed resources.

We also use November to promote the United Way of Thurston County's annual fund campaign. Last year our district gave more than $17,000 to help support local organizations and other programs such as Success by Six and the South Sound Reading Foundation. Forms are available at each school or district office. Payroll deductions are an option but must be renewed each year. This campaign will wrap up Nov. 25.

Thank you all again for your generosity, for your time and all the donations given from the heart.

Raj Manhas, Superintendent

November newsletter posted

Here's your November installment of the November PTA newsletter! It'll also come home via kid mail, if you actually get to see what's in that backpack!

Of particular interest to some of you... check out the information about the upcoming 31st annual Mt. View Bazaar, rapidly approaching on November 21st. There is still space available and a great need for volunteers to fill two-hour shifts.

Bazaar - space available, need volunteers!

From Tara-Lyn Poole, Bazaar coordinator:

Mountain View Annual Holiday Bazaar, November 21st @ the school (Gym). Hours are from 10am-4pm. I still have some space available. Please contact me ASAP if you are interested 455-0357 (message) or email. I also need volunteers to help the day of (2 hour shifts) I am desperate for help!!!

Standing rules, amended budget approved

Thanks very much to those of you who could attend tonight's PTA meeting! We had some important business that could not be postponed any longer, which made us run over about ten minutes. January's meeting has very little mandatory business, thankfully!

Tonight:

• We approved our amended standing rules - click here
• We approved an amended budget - click here
• We received the financial review of the 2008-2009 books, which will be included with the minutes in the next week or so

December's meeting is a Board meeting and the next general membership meeting is:

Tuesday, January 12th - 6:30 p.m. in the library

For January's meeting and as a PTA resolution, we will have something fun at this meeting!

Please remember that kids are always welcome! We had five youngsters running around this evening, without disrupting the meeting. We know that not everyone can attend meetings on Tuesdays, or generally. But the more of you who show up, the more people will have a voice as to what we do and how we spend money for the benefit of the students of Mt. View. There is a reason we must have a quorum of at least ten voting members to conduct official business!

Any questions or suggestions, please contact me!

Brian Morgan
PTA President 2009-2010
360-970-9513

PTA general meeting - Tuesday the 10th

Please join us for the next PTA general membership meeting:

Tuesday, November 10th
6:30 - 7:30 p.m.
Mt. View Elementary library

We need to review and approve our standing rules, as well as an amended budget. If time allows, I'd like to elect a nominating committee to begin the search for next year's officers. Here's the draft agenda, including the proposed standing rules (red italics are changes or additions) and draft budget. In the interest of being more green (I do love Kermit!) and at the suggestion of several members, I will bring only a few copies of these to the meeting.

Additionally, Jane Lehnis and Wendy Lippmann of Mt. View are scheduled to speak briefly about Title I school programs. Did you know that Mt. View receives Title I funding and what that means?

We must have at least ten voting members present to conduct official business - please consider attending. We don't have day care but kids are welcome and usually congregate in a corner of the library during the meeting.

Any questions, please contact me! If you have questions about the standing rules or budget, we will discuss at the meeting, so please bring your questions and/or suggestions.

Thanks so very much! And if you haven't joined PTA yet, why not?! See me, Membership Chair Keli Wetherald or any officer if you want to join or need more information about PTA.

Brian Morgan
Mt. View PTA President 2009-2010

Updated Albertson's registration info

Do you already shop at Albertson's? If you do, do you have an Albertson's rewards card? This is all you need to support Mountain View PTA! I know, I know - it sounds far too simple!

Courtesy of Treasurer Tabitha Gant:

All you need to do is register your Albertson's card at the following link: http://www.albertsons.com/cp/.

• You will put in your card number (which you can find on the back of your card or at the top of your receipts).
• Then you will follow by putting in your phone number (without the dashes).
• Then click on LOGIN.
• Once you get to the HOME page, look to the right side of the page and you will see a totem pole of signs.
• Click on FIND A PARTNER.
• Type in the NAME of the school (Mt. View), the CITY and STATE.
• Then click “FIND PARTNERS”. You will see Mt. View’s info
• Check the box and “ADD SELECTED PARTNERS”.

Pretty much ALL the surrounding schools participate in this program. So, you can add up to 4 schools to split your contribution to. For instance, one of my sons goes to Mt. View and the other one goes to Timberline, so I split my contribution 50/50 between the schools. This is an EASY program to enroll in and all you have to do is go shopping!

Pick up your fundraiser items Thursday

Fall fundraiser items are in tomorrow (Thursday), available for pick-up from 2-6 p.m.

Adopt-a-Road clean-up date #2

Please join us for our second installment of roadside clean-up as part of our partnership with the City of Lacey and it's Adopt-a-Road program.

Saturday, November 14th
Meet in the Mt. View rear parking lot (by the drop-off zone)
9 a.m.

Contact me if you have questions or if you are planning to attend. How long we will be out filling our trash bags depends on how many volunteers we have.

I hope to hear from you soon!

Thanks,
Brian Morgan
360-970-9513