I hope everyone had a Summer break full of fun experiences and great memories made! I’d like to welcome all those returning or joining our community to the new school year. Many of you know me from events past at Hayhurst and this year I’m taking on a new role as your PTA President. I have a few challenges this year for our community to conquer and I hope you can help me achieve these goals.
The PTA (Parent Teacher Association) is a force within our community that strives to make sure all kids have a positive experience throughout their time here at Hayhurst. How do we do this? We support our educators with classroom supplies and needs, field trip scholarships, and extra-curricular activities. The PTA also runs the many community building events hosted at our school each year. My hope is that everyone has an opportunity to attend one of these events. Many friendships have formed over the years due to our sense of community within these walls.
So, those goals I was referring to above; I really want to see more people getting involved at the school. It doesn’t have to be a full-time job, you can volunteer for a couple of hours and it makes a huge difference! I know there are those of us out there that find it impossible to make it during regular school hours, but there are volunteer opportunities for you too. Sharpening pencils at home means a teacher doesn’t have to do that in addition to grading and lesson planning when they get home. Taking cans to the bottle drop means extra funds for our food bag program that serves our most needy in the community. There are so many ways to help and we need you. No job is too small!
The next goal I would like to try to reach is having more enrolled in our Direct Giving Fundraising. Perhaps, you know that you aren’t going to be able to help in a more traditional role of volunteering. We never stop needing funding for the many projects going on throughout the school year. Even $10 a month is a huge help to our budget. That’s just two trips to Starbucks once a month for the duration of the school year. It might not seem like a lot, but if we all did this, we’d make such a difference to our school.
Back to school night is in just a few weeks (Sept. 20th, 6 PM) and I challenge all of you to attend. It’s a great way to see what your kids will be up to this year and meet their new teachers. The PTA will be hosting a table at this event and we’d love to have you stop by and learn more about what we do at Hayhurst. In addition, we meet once a month, usually on the 1st Tuesday at 6:30 PM. Stop by, we won’t commit you to anything, it’s just a great place to get information on what is currently happening at Hayhurst.
Please keep up to date on what is happening with the PTA via email, Facebook, the Hayhurst PPS Website, and our Hayhurst PTA website.
I look forward to taking on this new role this year, and working with all of you.
Thank you for the opportunity,
Julie Nelson, PTA President