PTO/Booster
On behalf of the PTO, we would like to welcome everyone back to school. PTO stands for Parent-Teacher Organization and consists of parents and teachers working together to support and enrich all students. We support school staff, help promote student engagement through school wide events, and assist in efforts to solve school needs through volunteering and funding.
The PTO is made up of several officers: Ashley Widener, President; Jennifer Leonard, Secretary; Joshua James, Treasurer; Katrina Romblad and Janie Wilson, Fun Run and Fundraising, in addition to our wonderful committee leaders and our parent volunteers. If you’re a father, mother, guardian, or grandparent with a child at Northwest, then we would love for you to become involved in the PTO!
Why YOU should get Involved!
The PTO continues to exist here at NWES only because of its volunteers. That is why you are so important. We need your help and so do your children. A special thanks to all of our volunteers from last year for all their hard work and dedication. Here at Northwest, we strive for growth and what better way than to become involved today! We hope to be able to lead some exciting events this year in hopes to get more parents involved in their children’s education. The PTO is a team effort in which we cannot succeed on our own. Please consider ways that you may want to get involved. Special talents and your creativeness are always welcome. We always have a lot of things going on and several committees that you can be a part of. Just a few of these include the Fun Run, Box Tops, Coke Gives, Runner’s Club, Talent Show, Book Fair, Cheermania, Hospitality, Duty Free Lunch, Restaurant/Event Nights, Social Media, Website Design and Fundraising. For every event that is held, we need our volunteers to help plan and execute. Per county policy, all volunteers must complete and turn in a Volunteer Interest Form and a Background Check Form, even if you have volunteered before. If you think there may be a chance you will volunteer, please turn in both forms as soon as possible. Please note, school Covid guidelines will determine our involvement in the classroom and lunchroom.
About our PTO Programs & Fundraising
Our primary objective as a PTO is to provide our school with funds, programs and resources that will enrich and maximize the education of every child and to benefit the school. To meet this important objective, we fundraise. Our goal that we have set and done extremely well with is to be One and Done when it comes to direct sales fundraisers. We get behind ONE fundraiser and give it all we’ve got in September so that we can earn the funds we need and start really focusing on implementing our programs and goals. Our hugely successful Boosterthon Fun Run is that for us! It’s exciting, it’s fun for the kids, it’s great exercise and it teaches strong core values, and it is loved by all! The best part is that it allows us to keep 75% of all the money raised! If we have another amazing year and meet our fundraising goal, then that’s it for direct sales fundraisers from the PTO for the rest of the school year! If we do not meet our goal, we will have to turn to traditional style fundraising, and unfortunately, many of those type fundraisers only allow you to keep 30-35% of the money earned. The PTO has some very big goals and the Fun Run proceeds are what get things done! Our focus this year is to fund teacher grants which allows the teachers to have funds to use on their students, teaching supplies and classrooms instead of having to cover these costs out-of-pocket with their own personal money. We also plan to purchase online learning programs and keep all of our technology and chromebooks up to date. With having to do learning at home for a lot of last year, we have all learned that chromebooks are now extremely important to provide a reliable source for children to access their teachers and studies. The state also requires that tests and EOG's be taken on chromebooks. We also fundraise to give extra support to other areas that need it, such as Battle of the Books, Robotics, EC, PE, Art, Music, AIG, Runner's Club and more! We provide new books for the library and the classrooms each year with our overwhelming support from the book fair. We paved the school track in 2019 to support our Runner's Club and provide an area for kids to walk or play at recess. We also keep our playground and basketball court areas up to school board standards. Those areas are also used after school when we host sports at Northwest. The Fun Run has always been a huge success and is the main reason that the PTO can do so much for the school each year. We want to thank you for all of your support.
To get a little more support from the companies who give back to schools, we will always ask for you to scan your receipts for Box Tops and enter in your Coca-Cola Codes online and to also join us for our restaurant nights. Those are just great added bonuses and we do not like to turn down free money from our community! We all work too hard for that! So participate when you can and if it works for you and your family, with no obligations. The great thing about these programs is you’re not directly trying to sell anything but the impact is real and they still earn money for our school! Our goal is to make this process seem more fun and less like work. Sometimes it’s nice to not have to cook, order a pizza instead and help support your school all at the same time! We will continue our partnerships with Hungry Howie’s, Salem Creamery & Coffee, Diari-O's and Cheermania. Chipotle and Urban Air are also partnering with us this school year.
Thank you all for your support. We are looking forward to a great year!
Sincerely,
Ashley Widener, Joshua James, Janie Wilson, Jennifer Leonard and Katrina Romblad
2021-2022 School Year