Feb. 3 Meeting Notes

In attendance:

Allegra Miller, Jeff O’Hara, Tom Darling, Barb Spaulding, Kate Dodge, Nancy Wood, Frank Twarog, Jim Goldsmith, Allan Monniere,  Ali Douglas, Sue Bergeron.

Adolescence 101:

Presented by Tom Darling and Barb Spaulding

• Reminder that the middle school team is looking for help from the community to help “coach” students about school-appropriate appearance.
• Please refer to the pamphlet created by the middle school teachers; this has been posted on the PIE website. This is a great resource…check it out!
• A reminder; parents have the most influence over how their child views what is right/wrong.  Keep talking; they’re listening.
•  Many 12-yr-olds have not achieved high levels of excecutive functioning, in fact, they can regress to the level of a 5-yr-old. Visual reminders, checklists and timers can help.
•  Jeff O’Hara noted that all staff attended a presentation at the beginning of the school year about executive functioning (how you process, prioritize, and respond to the information you receive from the environment). 

http://www.mykidsupport.com/node/347

PIE Updates

Fundraising

• Box Tops are due February 10^th. The class that has the most tops will win a pizza party!
• In April, tickets will go on sale for the Lake Monster’s Game.  The date has been set for the HCS “day at the park”: June 21^st.
• Twice a year, PiE delivers cash directly into classroom budgets at HCS.  In January, we gave $6,600 out to teachers and UA teams.  This money comes from proceeds from our fundraising efforts – THANK YOU!
• Deadline for spring grants applications is March 24^th.

Enrichment

• GeoBee went well - thanks to Kitty Frazier for leading the 4th graders. All who participated had a good time.
• The chess club launched 1/27 (every Monday until 4). Thanks to Aimee Frost, Kitty Frazier and Jeff O’Hara for helping with the logistics.
• Engineers Week is Feb 15-22. Stephanie Konowitz and Paul Rocheleau to find a day and time that works for scheduling.
• Academic Partner pilot is going for one teacher only (we had SOOOOO much fun with the states of matter experiments!!!!)  - Andrew Dennison, Kelli Brown and Carla Wuthrich had as much fun as the kids did!

Staff Appreciation

• Feb. 3 was the winter staff appreciation event. A big thanks to Joy Madden (a parent and massage therapist at Cynthia’s Day Spa) who donated her time and talents to give staff chair massages throughout the day.

Principal’s Report

• 6^th and 7^th graders participated in a volunteer/learning project to build bluebird houses. These birdhouses will be on the school property and on town trails.
• The spring musical has 55 kids in the performance and many on the support crew.
• February 17^th is the middle school science fair
• The middle school boys basketball A team won the CSSU tournament, the girls A team came in 3^rd.
• Beautiful new murals are up on the walls; come and check them out.
• 100^th day of school is on February 6^th. K-2 will be sharing collections of 100 items, and 3^rd-4^th graders are collecting 100 acts of kindness.

Help Wanted

• Saturday, March 15^th will be the pancake breakfast and basket raffle. Help will be needed for prep, collecting donations, flipping pancakes, and cleaning up.  Please keep this date open on your calendar, a sign up genius will be sent out in early March.  Thank you.

Next PIE Meeting is March 10, 2014 at 6 pm.

(March 3^rd School Board meeting before Town Meeting, VOTE March 4th)