Orchard Ridge Elementary

PTO Board Meeting

Thursday, September 13, 2001

Art Room

6-7:30 p.m.

Draft Meeting Summary

Note: The September 2001 Orchard Ridge Elementary (ORE) PTO meeting was originally scheduled as a one hour meeting followed by a general meeting on Tuesday, September 11. Because of the terrorist attacks in New York and Pennsylvania on September 11, the Madison Metropolitan School District cancelled all extracurricular activities at all schools throughout the districts. Lisa Stec, PTO Co-President, rescheduled the cancelled meeting to Thursday, September 13 by issuing an E-MAIL message to all PTO Board members on Wednesday, September 12. The decision was made to hold only a PTO Board meeting and dispense with the general meeting for Thursday.

Participants

Lisa Stec

Ralph Patterson

Nanci Kopecky

Mike Hertting

Lisa Lord

Don Crary

Meeting Management

In her initial statement, Lisa said that she wanted to keep to an agenda and meet the time goals for each topic. She noted that the PTO Board had only a limited amount of time to meet each month and a lot of topics to discuss. She said that socializing between Board members was important but wasted time at the meeting. Consequently, the PTO Board will try to meet once a month at Babes to work informally on issues and socialize at a “Speakeasy” function.

Communications

We acknowledged that the terrorist attacks on New York and Pennsylvania affected the whole nation. We were unprepared for the possible cancellation of the Tuesday meeting. Lisa said that she hoped everyone received her Wednesday E-MAIL message rescheduling the meeting but was not sure all of the PTO Board members received the message. She said that we will arrange a back up phone tree system at the next PTO meeting.

E-MAIL addresses

We believe we have all of the E-MAIL addresses for the current Board members with the exception of Don Crary. Don will be added and receive PTO Board information via E-MAIL.

Website

Ralph Patterson presented a proposal for a new website. (A copy of the flowchart for this proposal is attached to this meeting summary.) Ralph said that he developed a separate website for Orchard Ridge Elementary last year and was unsuccessful in having the webmaster for the Madison Metropolitan School District (MMSD) load the web information on the MMSD webserver. This year Ralph said that we would develop a website independent of MMSD and hope that the MMSD webmaster would supply a link to the MMSD website.

Mike Hertting agreed we were not successful in loading the ORE web information on the MMSD website last year. He said part of the problem was that only district employees attending district web training could ask the district webmaster to place data on the website. He thought that one of the teachers took the necessary training this summer but was not sure.

Ralph then discussed the organization of the website.

He said that he changed the concept of the website this year. He said that he was also a member of the Orchard Ridge Community Club (ORCC). ORCC also wanted a website. He noted that because ORE and ORCC are both located in Orchard Ridge, it made sense to combine both websites into one. To support his position, he noted the Elvejhem neighborhood has a website that incorporates its neighborhood association and its school.

He also said that he looked at all of the neighborhood websites and noted most of the sites in Madison used geocities a free or for pay service from Yahoo. He suggested that we start with the free service and move to the pay service, if necessary. The difference between the free service an the pay service is advertisements. The free service means a visitor sees Yahoo ads when he or she logs onto the website. The pay service dispenses with the ads. The pay service would cost approximately $8.95 per month and this cost could be split between the ORE PTO and ORCC. [Note: The website will be http://www.geocities.com/orchardridgemadison. Orchardridge was not available and so the extension of Madison was added.]

The website proposal has four webpage levels. Level 1 is the homepage for the Orchard Ridge neighborhood. Level 2 contains webpages for ORE, a history of the neighborhood webpage, a map of the Orchard Ridge neighborhood, the Orchard Ridge Community Club webpage, events in the Orchard Ridge neighborhood webpage, and a political webpage. Level 3 involves only ORE, ORCC, and the political webpages. The political webpage will have a separate page for messages from the alderpeople and a separate page for the county board member. ORCC will have separate pages for a message from the ORCC president, issues of the ORCC newsletter-The Grapevine, ORCC events, meetings an calendar, membership, and 50 year history. The ORE webpage will have a principal message page , staff and general school information page, PTO page, school events and calendar page, and homework links page. Level 4 would be a PTO pages for minutes and events.

Ralph stated the ORE page would look similar to the trial website from last year. He said that the only change was to add a homework link page. He saw the homework page which contained information from an Elvejhem REACH teacher and thought it was a good idea.

Lisa Lord asked that a comment page be added so that the web visitors could supply comments back to the PTO. Ralph replied that he would try to add that page.

Nanci Kopecky stated that the organization of the webpage left her uneasy. She thought that webpage information, such as names and telephone numbers, could be obtained by undesirable people and threaten the safety of the ORE children. She was especially concerned about the posting of a child’s picture on the website.

Ralph responded that there were no plans to have any pictures of children on the webpages. He also said that the other information was available on the website was available in telephone books, school directories, etc. He said that the pictures planned on the webpages thus far would include a picture of the Orchard Ridge sign on the Level 1 webpage, a picture of the principal on the ORE webpage, and a picture of the ORE school sign on the ORE webpage. He again noted that this was not a lot different than the trial website from last year.

Nanci responded that she was still uneasy regarding the website and suggested that guidelines on the information that should not be posted on the website should be written down and become polity of the PTO Board. Lisa noted that these guidelines, if developed, could become part of the PTO Board’s bylaws.

Ralph was instructed to develop general guidelines for the webpage. He was instructed to begin on the development of the webpages as he proposed.

Ice Cream Social

Although the gym in ORE has been reserved for the Ice Cream Social on Friday, September 14 we are hoping that the weather will be good and the event will be held outside. We may place a bucket at the Ice Cream Social to collect donations for the New York-Pennsylvania terrorist tragedy.

Fundraiser

Lisa Lord commented that she was pleased with the progress of the current fundraiser. She said that it was introduced to the students in a modest amount of time and that the products appeared to have quality and there were many different types of products.

Treasurer’s Report

The treasurer was not present and so there was no treasurer’s report.

Playground Committee

Lisa Stec said that the first meeting of the Playground Committee was yesterday morning. Lisa and three other women comprise the Playground Committee. The Playground Committee will develop a plan for replacing and adding equipment. Lisa said that they can get help from Home Depot, Menards, etc. for redesigning the playground. She noted they had about $7,000 to start with for adding or replacing equipment.

Mike suggested that the Playground Committee set priorities for replacing or adding equipment and seek to meet one or a number of priorities each year rather than spending all of the money in a year.

Traffic

Nanci reported that the request to locate stop signs at the corner of Flad and Gilbert has been unsuccessful. She said that she had discussed the matter with Scott Peters, ORCC, and she believes the matter is not closed.

Curriculum Night

Curriculum Night was cancelled this year because it was inadvertently scheduled on the same date as a major religious holiday. Curriculum night was set up so that the parents could meet their child’s teacher and the teacher could answer questions regarding the course of the child’s education for that year.

Mike stated that the teachers were never a big fan of Curriculum Night because it meant that they would have to be in school for Curriculum Night and Open House in the same semester. Don Crary agreed that this was a teacher concern.

Mike suggested that the Curriculum Night be combined with Open House for this year. He thought that he could stagger the times such that parents could hear about the curriculum in the classroom and later also see what their children had accomplished during Open House. Mike said the teachers would have more enthusiasm for a one night Curriculum Night/Open House rather than rescheduling Curriculum Night.

We agreed that we should try this combined night this year and see how it goes.

4/5 Combination Teacher Loss

We rehashed the loss of the 4/5 combination teacher position from ORE. Mike said that he finally was able to sit down with a high level administrator and discuss the situation. He said that once it was explained to him, he could understand why the district completed the action necessary. He conceded that the district could have used a different approach in telling the affected parents as to the change.

Nanci presented figures showing that Stephens school had similar attendance figures to ORE but they had not lost a teacher. She also noted that some parents were still upset with how the district had handled the entire episode. We decided that the PTO would send a letter to the school board objecting to the loss of the 4/5 combination teacher.

Adjourn

We adjourned at 7:30 p.m.

Web Page Proposal