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The Beverly Cleary School PTA is seeking to fill committee positions for the upcoming school year.  We need chairpersons, co-chairs, and committee helpers!

Examples of committees/programs that can use your help:

Our First Annual Beverly Cleary School PTA Rummage Sale was a big success!  First, thanks to the organizing committee of Katherine Muller, Jenny Shea, Susan Crabtree and Barbara Smith-Warner, to the awesome volunteers who spent many hours setting up and selling, for the approximately 75 famililes who donated items and for those of you who went shopping on Friday. The total sale brought in approximately $3300.00, plus many books were donated to the teachers along with some other supplies needed for the school.

We already have volunteers lined up for next year, for probably the same time of year in order to get free building space. We'll give you more notice next year when you can start your spring/summer cleaning.

Calling all families!  Please help make our 1st (annual?!) school-wide garage sale a success.  Clean out your closets, your basement and your garage and put your clutter to work for Beverly Cleary School.

We are holding a school-wide garage sale at the Fernwood building on Friday, June 12th, from 9 am-5 pm, and we need your extra belongings to help make this sale a huge success.  If you can, try to find a little time in the next week to streamline your home -- and let your extra items become cash for the school!

Donations may be dropped off at the cafeteria between 9 am and 8 pm on Thursday, June 11th.   Please be sure that all items are in clean, saleable condition.

If you have any questions (or to volunteer to help with set-up or the day of the sale), email BCS parent Stephanie More.

The PTA Clothing Closet is seeking gently used clothing donations.  They have had a 22% increase in usage this year, and in April they had an average of 45 students per day visit.  They are running low on clothes and could use more donations.  As you are doing your spring cleaning and clearing out some clothes from your closets (infant to adult sizes), please consider donating to the PTA Clothing Closet.  At Hollyrood you can drop clothes in the blue bin (labeled clothing closet) in the lobby and in Fernwood you can find a collection site in the Main Office.  Rosanne will direct you to the location.

Many thanks to all the families who donated books to our book drive for the Children's Book Bank.  With your help, we collected more than 1,200 books! These books will be packaged for students in the Albina Head Start program who will receive them just as school is ending, to jump start their summer reading program.  Thanks everyone for your support and participation.  Look for another book drive next school year.

Our next PTA General Meeting is Wednesday, May 13 from 6:30 to 8:00 PM, and we are proud to be able to introduce you to our new principal, Teri Geist, who will be in attendance to say a few words about herself and to take some questions.  We hope you will take advantage of this opportunity to hear some of the things that are in our school's future.  We will also be discussing next year's budget and fundraising plans, as well as electing our slate of new PTA officers.

Childcare will be available.

The PTA Board nominating committee has been busily gathering candidates for next year’s PTA Board.  Some of our board members will be continuing but we need to fill some positions.  If you have an interest, please contact the Nominating Committee Chair Doug McMahon.  We continue to need strong leaders for our school, so we hope you will consider our call.

Thank you to all that participated in our fundraising survey.  The PTA board will discuss the results at our next board meeting and consider your input when creating next year's budget.  We will also have an opportunity to discuss the results at our next general meeting.  In the meantime, please feel free to look over the responses yourself (the PDF file is attached below).

Come hear school board candidates talk about their vision of the future for Portland Public Schools.

• When: Thursday April 2 from 6:30-8:30
• Where: Fernwood Cafetorium during the PTA General Meeting

All 6 candidates plan to attend or send a surrogate.  Put on your civic thinking cap and come with a list of questions!
Childcare will be available.

The PTA would be grateful for your input on a fundraising survey.  It will take just a few minutes of your time and your comments are greatly appreciated.

This survey has been prepared for our school's parents and teachers in an effort to help prioritize goals and fundraising efforts for next year. We would like to maximize our impact and have focused goals for the upcoming year.

Currently the Beverly Cleary School PTA dedicates efforts towards legislative goals, classroom support, advocacy and communication with administration, volunteer coordination, fundraising, and supports parent initiatives for after school programs. The PTA communicates with and supports the Foundation in its fund-raising efforts, but only Foundation funds may be use to pay for additional staff.

The survey will be closed end-of-day March 20, 2009. Results will be used to help determine our 2009-10 budget and will be discussed at the PTA General Meeting on April 2.