LHCS PTO
General Meeting
Minutes
January 12, 2010
Meeting was called to order at 6:33pm.
Melissa called the meeting to order.
Mrs. Alexander opened the meeting with a prayer and offered the principal´s message.
Gym will be held at the YMCA on Tuesday´s in February. Catholic School´s week begins on January 31st. Changes in PTO meeting are as follows: the March 16th meeting is paired up with Title I and the May 6th meeting is being moved to May 5th. The snow make up will probably be around Easter. A committee was formed to discuss the school uniforms and update it. The school has received new computers.
Tammy gave the secretary´s report and stated that the newsletter will go out in the next ten days. She also thanked Rena for her job on the website.
Julie gave the Treasurers report. The Fair Trade profit was over $700. More items are available at the school at a discount of 40%. The PTO has a balance of over $5,000. Next PTO fundraiser is the Mothers Day Flowers in May.
Heather gave a school council report. They will be conducting a sandwich sale and are working on scheduling a dance. Valentine´s Day flowers will be available and a spring candle sale will be held.
A Box Tops check has arrived in the amount of $1200 which has been divided amongst the teachers. Another check will come at the end of the year.
Mrs. Cooper said reconciliation is coming up and she will be teaching the students PowerPoint.
Mrs. Hanson said the kids will be starting their research reports. An at home biography project will be assigned. Safety patrol is going well.
Mrs. Jones said that third grade will begin multiplication this week.
Keith Kibler from the Lock Haven Police gave a presentation on the seat belt law. Four kids lose their lives daily in vehicle crashes. Children under the age of 4 should be in an infant car seat. Parents should be sure to follow seat recommendations. It is safer for a child to stay rear facing as long as possible. Never put rear facing seats in the front of a car because of the air bags. Children between 4 and 8 are required to be in a booster seat. The school has copies of the recommended seats. A lap belt should go across hips and not across the abdomen. Then it should go across the shoulder and collar bone not the neck. Front seat passenger should always be belted but children should always be in back. Rule of thumb is that children age 12 and older can ride up front. Seat belt enforcement for under age 8 if not restrained is a fine up to $100 plus court costs. Drivers who have children ages 8 and up cannot be stopped for the child not being buckled however, if stopped for another citation then the lack of a seatbelt can be an added citation. The LH police department is participating in the buckle up initiative. Make sure booster seats are properly installed in your car. There is a website for more information — iihs.org.
Crosswalk safety - Most of the intersection in town have controls. Where there is not a control but a marked crosswalk, pedestrians have the right of way. Crossing anywhere other than a crosswalk, vehicle has the right of way.
Scott Alexander spoke on technology safety which includes the Internet and cell phones. The kids do not understand the ramifications of the technology they are using. Parents need to monitor what they are doing. Facebook is a real issue. If kids in this school are on Facebook, they lied to get on because Facebook requires an age minimum of 13. This leads to the concept of cyber bullying. Online games and chat rooms get out of hand and trickle on to the playground. Please be aware of who your children are talking to and if they are spending a lot of time online. Make sure you have a firewall in place. There are free resources out there for this type of protection. For example, whitehouse.com is a pornographic site. By having filtration in place this will eliminate this issue of children getting access to this site. Opendns web site has a free option that provides filtration which you can set with parental controls. Anti-virus software is also highly recommended. McAfee is excellent as well as trend micro and Norton.
Posting of pictures on the Internet can have legal ramifications. You have the right to ask people to take pictures down. Facebook and MySpace cannot enforce that law; you have to go the person directly. If the kids are posting and another parent asks for it to be removed, you should comply. Consider the fact that a birthday party picture may provide information to others that they shouldn´t have.
Cell phones are powerful. The most popular thing is texting. Bullying can occur this way as well. This is causing a loss of social action skills. There is no emotion in a text message except the emotion the receiver tries to interpret. Children need to sort out differences face-to-face and eliminate the confusion of misinterpreted messages. The other issue is sexting. This is actually a felony of distributing child pornography. As soon as you hit send with any technology piece, you have lost control of that information. In conclusion, make sure you know what is going on with your kids and make sure they are comfortable coming to you with issues.
Meeting adjourned at 7:37pm.