PTA News

Canajoharie PTA Minutes—December 12, 2006

1. Greetings
   1. Co-President, Melissa Balk, called the meeting to order at 7:00 pm with thirteen members in attendance. The pledge was recited.
2. Secretary’s Report
   1. Secretary, Tracy Mead, read the secretary’s report from the last meeting. Tina Hopler made a motion to accept the minutes as written with Ellen Welch seconding the motion. All were in favor.
3. Treasurer’s Report
   1. Treasurer, Ellen Welch, reviewed the treasurer’s report with updates. Scott Tyler made a motion to accept the treasurer’s report with Chris Hopler seconding the motion. All were in favor.
4. Old Business
   1. Membership: Melissa reported the High School memberships had been collected. Bronwyn McCaffery reported she placed an ad in the Courier Standard that should run in the near future regarding PTA membership. The membership form will be available in the paper for people to return to the school.
   2. C&H Fundraiser Report: Melissa reported that there was a return of $72.55 and some items from C&H and once again thanked everyone for their help with the successful fundraiser.
   3. Movie Night: The next scheduled movie night is December 15th at 7:00pm in the Great Room with the movie “Santa Claus 2” to be shown. Melissa has the popcorn for the movie nights. There was discussion regarding problems with having a dance the same night as the November 17th movie night. There was also discussion regarding the policy for children attending the movie night without their parents. Melissa noted she would have parents leave a number where they could be reached if they were not staying for the movie with their child.
   4. NYS Consumer Protection Board: Melissa scheduled April 18, 2007, as a meeting date for the informational seminar on identity theft. The presentation will cover what parents should be aware of regarding their child’s future credit and identity theft. There will be more information to follow, as the date gets closer.
   5. TV for Middle School: An update was given on the information collected on the new plasma TV system for the Middle School. Melissa reported that Pat Beyer had obtained an estimate from LADD Electronics for the TV and shared the details of the estimate with the other members. Melissa will get 2 more estimates for an LCD TV and will report on her findings at the next meeting.
5. New Business
   1. Reality Check: A brief presentation at the beginning of the meeting was given by a group of area students from Reality Check. Reality Check is a group of students fighting the tobacco industries marketing tactics towards teens. Their focus is on two resolutions they are trying to pass regarding tobacco advertisement in magazines and tobacco use in movies. They are working on obtaining support from area groups to get their resolutions passed. Members reviewed and discussed the two resolutions. A motion to support the magazine resolution was made with all in favor. A motion to support the movie resolution was made with 12 in favor and 1 opposed.
   2. Mr. Rose: Mr. Rose reviewed the recent article in the newspaper surrounding the computers at Canajoharie School. Canajoharie was one of the first schools to be audited after a $12 million fraud problem in other schools. The two areas auditor reviewed were technology and reimbursement expenses. The technology category is the inventory system the school has for keeping track of where and who has the computers. Out of 450 computers available at the school only 20 could not be accounted for on the date of the audit. In the reimbursement expenses category the auditors noted Canajoharie had more checks and balances in place than other schools. The only deficiency in this area was $80 in working lunch reimbursement.
   3. Mr. Rose also gave an update on the “excel” funding project. Mr. Rose highlighted some of the areas listed to be worked on. The amount of the proposal to be submitted is approximately 9.5 million dollars covering 5 different categories of need and detailed between each school building. Mr. Rose also shared the proposed traffic pattern change for the elementary and middle school. The proposal is tentatively scheduled to be voted on March 6th. In anticipation of the various steps that need to be done the anticipated work on the traffic pattern change would be done in late November 2008.
   4. Leadership Committee: Melissa reported that in an effort to ensure the continued success of our PTA a committee should be formed to review where our PTA is headed in the coming years. This topic will be discussed further at the next meeting.
   5. Correspondence: Melissa read thank yous from Mrs. Bowerman, Mrs. DeJung and Mrs. Kolodjiek for the PTA support through the enrichment committee for the funding they received.
6. The meeting was adjourned at 8:25 pm. The next meeting is scheduled for January 9th, 2007.