January 2025 PTSA Community Meeting Minutes

Written By Liz Mogno

Date/Time: Thursday, 1/30/25; 7pm

Location:  Innovation Space at Lincoln Elementary School

Facilitator: Stacy Berger, PTSA President

Board Members Present: Stacy Berger, President; Amy Miller, VP; Liz Mogno, Secretary; Doug Lazure, Treasurer; Allison Kahlich, Communications; Mackenzie Schmidt, Marketing; Lara Pomprowitz, Fundraising; Sarah Callaway, Volunteer Coordinator

Community Members Present: Rebecca Gates, Jill Isenstadt, Isaac Fees, Josh Chambers-Mills, Kaitlin Chamber-Mills, Krissy Koenig, Jackie Klein, Rachel Bensinger, Katy Downie, Jennifer Litsas, Carrie Brown, Anna Han, Kate Kopelove


Next Board Meeting: April 10, 2025; Lincoln Elementary School


Lincoln PTSA Meeting Minutes


Call to Order: Amy called the meeting to order at 7pm

Action Items:  Approve last meeting’s minutes; Vote on teacher grants; budget review


Agenda Items (Stacy Berger, President)

  • Connect as a community

  • Review budget and approve grants

  • Committee meeting review

  • Community Corner-school choice, school budget

  • School Information presented by Ms. Dulsky (SOAR program, writing benchmarks)

Welcome/Opening (Stacy Berger, President)

  • Role Call: All persons present introduced themselves and shared their connection to Lincoln

  • Motion to approve last meeting’s minutes was made by Liz Mogno, all were in favor, no opposition, last meeting minutes were approved.

  • Per bylaws, the PTSA is to form and maintain the following three committees: Membership, Finance, and Nominating

  • Committees were formed at the last public PTSA meeting and said committees have met once to determine areas of work and goals

Membership Committee (Liz Mogno, Secretary)

  • Members: Liz Mogno (Chair), Stacy Berger, Conor Gleason, Mackenzie Schmidt

  • Liz spoke about initial meeting, identified goals and objectives for the membership committee which can be seen in summary here: PTSA_January Community Meeting_2025

Finance/Audit Committee (Doug Lazure, Treasurer)

  • Members: Doug Lazure, Lara Pomprowitz, Amy Miller

  • we’re in a good place budget wise for this year

  • great result from donations for end of year teacher gifts/fund

  • BASH coming up

  • we have a new platform for donations: Zeffy, it has been a great interface

  • Zeffy allows us to track donations easily and does not charge credit card fees which saves a significant amount of money each year

  • Doug presented the PTSA financial report; see details here: PTSA_January Community Meeting_2025

Nominating Committee (Allison Kahlich)

  • need to fill the treasurer and secretary positions for the coming school year (all positions are two-year terms)

  • feel free to reach out with questions and/or suggestions for nominees

Teacher Grants (Amy Miller, VP)

  • Grants are one of things we do to support Lincoln staff

  • We’re typically working with about $5,000 for requests

  • See slide here: PTSA_January Community Meeting_2025  for grant distribution

  • See slide for items up for approval at this time

  • Questions and input taken: suggestions on sharing this information out to promote donations and support for teachers requests

  • Q: Reserve fund? A: yes, we have $10,000 in reserve as a buffer

  • Amy motioned to approve the teacher grants; motion was seconded; all were in favor; motion passed

BASH (Lara Pomprowitz, Fundraising)

  • Lara explained what BASH is and what it funds

  • This year’s BASH date: Saturday, May 3rd

  • funds are raised through ticket sales, online auction, live auction and paddle raise, donations through experience auction

  • teacher experiences will open up earlier this year to help the teachers host these events; opening on 2/18 with the experiences running from March 1st- 

  • teachers and staff attend for free

  • get involved with the BASH; event planning, sponsor, experience auction

  • there will be an option to donate experiences

Volunteer Needs (Sarah Callaway, Volunteer Coordinator)

  • Looking for volunteers over the next couple of months

  • Late spring: staff/teacher appreciation week (first week of May)

  • Bike rodeo: fun after school event in the spring; unique to Lincoln

  • Science fair will be in April, please look for upcoming information for parent volunteer support

  • Talent Show (next week!); Katy explained need for help for rehearsal days and night of talent show-mostly help to guide younger helpers

Community Corner (Shelley Dulsky, Principal)

  • Budget: we are in a great position for next year

  • Going from 3.5 instructional paras to 5.5

  • Our GT teacher is going to move from part time to full time

  • Lots of issues with the budget that have been worked through

  • Adding another primary classroom (typically we have a waitlist of 100 people to go into our ECE programs)

  • We don’t get funding for preschool but we do get funding for kindergarten

  • We are at 88% capacity, some room to grow

  • Projected at 278 (up from 258) for the coming year

  • From a budget perspective, we are in great shape; PTSA has been a great contributor to that

  • We’ve had almost all of our scheduled tours take place; good turnout to in person as well as good response

  • Q: With the new government administration, how will that affect DPS and Lincoln? A: DPS and Lincoln are prepared and we are in a good place; continually monitoring and proactively addressing issues that come forward

  • We will be able to add to our GT programming

  • Q: Where do we expect the 10 new kindergarteners from; A: We already have high numbers however we will very likely absorb some students from recent consolidation/school closures

New All School Programming: SOAR (Shelley Dulsky, Principal)

  • SOAR: Supporting Opportunities for Achievement and Resilience

  • will be delivered across the school, during 2 blocks of time per week

  • whole staff is involved in planning

  • kinder, 1-3 cohort, 4-6 cohort

  • planning what kids need in the coming 6-8 weeks (ongoing)

  • traditional and montessori teachers will work together; small group setting; different supports occurring; once a skill is mastered, a child will move to another area/skill/focus

  • data driven; parents will be notified of when these blocks will be occurring and what the focus will be for their child/student

Writing benchmark timeline (Shelley Dulsky, Principal)

  • written expression benchmarks were low across the board when recently assessed

  • each grade level picked a text for students to respond to

  • use of RACE protocol: Restate the question, answer the question, cite the evidence, explain the evidence

  • using nationally normed rubrics

  • allows teacher to continue to gather data to progress through each level; assists in their instruction

Q and A:

  • Question re: contrast between achievement and growth scores. Shelley explained how we can have high achievement and low growth

  • if you have less than 16 persons in a group/sample size, they are not reported

  • Q: where will the new primary classroom go? A: it’s in the process; licensing is coming tomorrow to begin looking and making those decisions

School Choice (Stacy Berger, President)

  • Talk to friends about our school

  • Put out a Lincoln yard sign 

  • Go on google or great schools and give a rating 

  • Can share posts on social media outlets you use (Lincoln is on Facebook and Instagram)

  • Q: What is the typical rate of turnover in the traditional classroom? A: Very little; this past year was very transitional and very atypical

Other Business

Upcoming Dates for School and PTSA Events (Mackenzie Schmidt, Marketing and Communications)

  • Mark your calendars 

Closing & Reminders

  • Look at ways to get involved in volunteering

  • Support BASH 

  • Promote Lincoln


Stacy motioned to adjourn the meeting at 8:30pm, all in favor, meeting adjourned.


Next Board Meeting: 4/10/25, 7pm, Lincoln Elementary School

Liz Mogno
Next

November 2024 Public PTSA Meeting Minutes