Wells Elementary PTA – Board Meeting Minutes 

November 12, 2021 

The board meeting of the Wells Elementary PTA was called to order on November 12, 2021 at 8:33 am via zoom by president, Annamarie Saavedra, with secretary, Joanne Carrasco, being present. A quorum  was established. 

The minutes of the previous board meeting from October 15, 2021 were presented approved. The treasurer’s report showed:  

Annamarie Saavedra informed the board that the PTA bank account was hit with a fraudulent  check. The bank has started an investigation and since there is currently a negative balance in  the account it has been frozen. A new account is being opened with a new bank. If you have  

any check request please be patient and once this is cleared you will be able to submit your  check request. In addition to working with the bank on the fraud investigation we are working  with the insurance agency to ensure coverage since this is considered a theft. A police report  has been filled as well.  

No treasurer report was presented.  

There were a few correspondences to share with the membership. These were from the staff for the  yummy snacks and the 5th grade team thanked the PTA for the Spooky Spuds lunch before Halloween. 

President’s Report was presented by Annamarie Saavedra. Monthly staff meetings are resuming and the  PTA coordinates the funding of snacks. For November the funding for the staff meeting came out of the  PTA food and beverage line item budget. Going forward parent sign ups are going to be coordinated so  that snacks can be donated. The following positions are still open: Bank Statement Opener, Parent  Education, Multicultural, Spring Fling/Carnival and Auction, Special and Gifted Education (SAGE), After  school programs. If you know anyone that is interested please let Annamarie Saavedra know. A few  parents have commented on them not receiving PTA information and a suggestion was made to perhaps  create a flyer to go in the orange PTA folders with the listing of open positions to help fill some positions.  Annamarie Saavedra is going to create one consistent PTA form to gather parents contact information  that would like to receive information from the PTA, she will then send it to Sara Meyer and ask her to  include it in the next few sets of school newsletters that she sends out. In the meantime Annamarie  Saavedra will ask if all the teachers can send out the form to each class list to ensure all parents get the  form so we can have more parents receive PTA news and updates. Spirit wear store online is open and  most items are sold out. The items remaining are from previous years styles. All of the budget for spirit  wear has been used. If we would like to re-order more spirit wear the budget needs to be increased  before ordering additional spirit wear. The possibility of doing pre-orders might be the way to get an  idea of what is needed for the budget in order to purchase new spirit wear. Annamarie Saavedra is going  to ask Jennifer Lipman if she can do pre-orders but this would mean the budget would have to be  increased.  

Programs Report was presented by Annamarie Saavedra. Robotics club is underway, there are about 40  students enrolled and the students are enjoying the classes. They have had the chance to build robots  and make them move. Each week is a new project that the students get to build. The student council  food drive is taking place from November 11-18. There is a grade level competition. 

Communications Report was presented by Annamarie Saavedra. A reminder that if you need things  updated, Elizabeth Conrad is the communications chair for the news letter. Her contact information is:  elizabethconrad@me.com. She has requested if you email her content for the newsletter please put  Wells PTA in the subject line of your email to her. If you have any social media post reach out to  Annamarie Saavedra via email: wellspta_president@yahoo.com . Paige Reagan is responsible for  the PTA website content. If you need to add anything or make changes to the website you can contact  her via email at: wellsptacommunication@gmail.com. 

Volunteers Report was presented by Annamarie Saavedra. Picture re-take day is scheduled for  November 30th and we have one volunteer. Orange folder stuffing for November has been going great.  For December it will be 3rd grades turn to help. Hospitality for November will be distributing mini pies  on November 15. The week of December 15th will be fun holiday snack cart for the teachers. Spooky  spuds was really fun and the teachers enjoyed it. PTA will help with coordinate a camp out with tiger  dads.  

Ways and means Report was presented by Gayle Stanley. Important dates coming up are as follows:  • November 11-19th Book fair 

• November 10-18th Sole(Sweats or Leave Early) passes will sold and delivered to the teachers and staff on the 19th.  

For the spring fling/auction event, Gayle Stanley will create a flyer with a QR code to help promote it and  get volunteers to help. If anyone knows of businesses that are willing to donate a gift card from their  business towards the auction. Regarding the world wear bins, it is possible to add a 2nd bin in one  parking spot as long and no one parks next to the spot where the bins are. The bin generated $184.08  for half of the month of October. The book fair was set up November 11th and the preview day is on the  12th. Book fair sale starts on November 15 and students are allowed to shop after school with a parent  until 3:25pm. If parents are there to have lunch with their child they can shop with their child during  their lunch time. Each class will have an opportunity to shop during their scheduled library time. This  year the e-wallet is a new option for kids to pay for books. This eliminates the need for students to bring  in cash or checks. The parents set it up before hand and funds it with whatever amount the parent  would like. At the end of the fair if students have extra cash on their e-wallet they have the option to  donate those funds to the PTA e-wallet and it gets donated towards bucks for books. There are teacher  wish list bins designated at the fair for students and parents that wish to buy a book for their teachers.  Each teacher is receiving a $5.00 off coupon to use towards the book fair. A special edition tiger beat  newsletter will be going out Monday to help promote the book fair.  

Wells Administrative Staff Report was presented by Principal Sara Meyer. The partnership with the PTA  is very much appreciated. Everything is starting to feel more like normal with all the help the PTA has  been providing. Field trips are taking place next week for those grades that are able to go using the PTA  filed trip funds, the students greatly appreciate this as well. After thanksgiving break middle of the year  MAP testing will take place, reading record testing and other sorts of literacy inventories. This updated  data helps drive teaching instructions in class. We will be celebrating 2 retirements at the end of the  school semester. Our librarian Angelia and the CTA Mary are retiring. The interview process is underway  for these positions. Congratulations to our speech language pathologist: Elizabeth Mathews applied for 

a grant and she won it from PISD education foundation. She was chosen for the Playground  Augmentative Assistive Communication Board. There are numerous students that communicate with a  tablet because they are non verbal, when they are out during recess or PE it's hard to carry a tablet  around to communicate. It's a board that they will be able to touch and help increase communication.  At the previous general meeting a request came in regarding input for indoor recess equipment as well  as outdoor recess equipment. Sara Meyer met with the team leaders and she has submitted a fund  request to the PTA to assist with indoor recess items.  

Questions, comments, new business: A question was asked about safety patrol: 5th grade Safety  patrol has started and 4th grade will start helping after spring break. When its your students turn the  parent will get notified in advance. A question was asked about student council representatives and how  that works. Sara Meyer explained that Shonda Mashburn and Stephanie Pels are the student council  representatives, they spoke to 3rd-5th grade to see if they were interested in being a student  representative for their class. Every class got 2 representatives and if students were interested they had  to prepare a speech to present to their class, then the class voted to pick their representatives. The  selected class representatives meet once a month after school on a Tuesday and they help with  beautification projects around the school, they are helping with the canned food drive and come up with  fun dress up days for the school. The new links for all of the yearbook material have been posted on the  PTA website. You can go onto the Wells PTA page and click on the links to start uploading photos for the  yearbook. The link to order the yearbook is also located on the PTA website. Annamarie Saavedra will  send the link to upload pictures for the yearbook to the teachers and ask them to upload photos for the  yearbook. Allison Fritts is in charge of yearbooks this year.  

Announcements: 

Important Dates: 

Board Meeting Dates: 

• Friday, December 3rd at 8:00 am 
• Friday, January 14th at 8:00am 
• Friday, February 11th at 8:00am 
• Friday, March 18th at 8:00am 
• Friday, April 8th at 8:00am 
• Friday, May 6th at 8:00am 

General Meeting Dates: 

• Thursday, December 9th at 8:00am 

Meeting adjourned at 9:39am.