Fundraising, Foreign Language Subject of PTA's Meeting with Board

School fundraising must be more collaborative, especially in these tough economic times.

That was the consensus of the Scotch Plains-Fanwood PTA Council Monday night in a discussion with the Board of Education.

Parents and PTA representatives gathered in Park Middle School's media center Monday to voice their questions and concerns for the coming year to the Board of Education. The annual roundtable discussion, sponsored by the PTA Council, involved the PTA posing two questions to the board, and then the board posing two of its own to the PTA.

In response to the first question from the board about fundraising in the district, PTA Council President Jeanne Cleary said the PTA agrees that fundraising by various organizations often overlaps.

"We're often chasing the same dollars," she said. "Now might be a good time to look at what we do, how we do it and how we might do it better."

To help make fundraising process more efficient, the PTA plans to meet twice in February and March to identify ways to streamline different organization's calendars and possibly combine efforts.

"We have a lot of different groups digging into the same pockets," Board President Trip Whitehouse said. "From a board standpoint, we're looking to get a coordinated effort so for once we're all marching in the same direction."

How this coordinated effort will work remains to be seen. One parent in attendance Monday stated she felt it'd be particularly difficult to centralize fundraising at the high school level, since there's so many different groups and they're often working toward specific goals, like the music department's need for a new piano.

PTA Council Vice President Susan Johnson said she thinks the streamlining will be more effective on efforts that are more ongoing, like raising money for programming.

"I definitely think that coordinating programming is an area where we could gain some efficiencies by combining our efforts," Johnson said.

Other parents suggested that the schools communicate better so that groups can earn savings by ordering things like apparel in bulk.

The other question posed by the board regarded adding a non-European language to the curriculum. The district approved the move last year as part of its strategic plan, but is trying to decide this year which language to choose.

The PTA told the board that they fully support the plan, but are more concerned with its implementation in regards to costs and finding sufficient teachers.

Superintendent Dr. Margaret Hayes said the district is looking very closely at how to integrate a language like Mandarin or Arabic. The district would likely offer it at the high school level, she said, and may have the option of sharing teachers with other districts. Colleges like Rutgers University are also training teachers.

Hayes noted that her and World Language Supervisor Linda Materna's recent trips to China, funded by special programs at no cost to the district, were also an attempt to build cross-relationships with other schools should SP-F implement Mandarin.

Materna told the parents that a survey regarding the selection of a non-European language will be distributed to the community by the end of January.

Some parents expressed their concern about the possible elimination of the German program, but Hayes iterated that any reduction in the program has only come from lack of enrollment, not the district's lack of commitment to it.

"We're not saying that the wave of the future is Mandarin and that we're giving up German," Hayes said.

The district also provided an update on the solar panel project at Terrill Middle School. Board Member Rob O'Connor said that the architect is currently completing the plans and that a presentation will on the project will likely be made at a board meeting in late January. The board said they'd like to pursue similar projects at other schools in the district, but doing so will be dependent on future grant awards. Business Administrator Anthony Del Sordi said the district anticipates the solar panels will meet 15 to 20 percent of the school's energy needs.

Following the formal discussion between the board and PTA, parents raised questions of their own about class sizes and student safety. Stay tuned for a story on those issues tomorrow.