PTO Meeting Notes - 9/2/2026

BES PTO Meeting Notes

September 2, 2026 9:15-10:20am

In-Person Attendees: 

  • Lacey Hatfield – President 

  • Glenis Moon – Treasurer 

  • Angie Lofaro – Secretary 

  • Cindy Salus

  • Jen Messier 

  • Ashley Cockerham

  • Christina Clark

  • Shari Moon

  • Jessica Sterling 

  • Karen Caldwell, Principal

  • Rebecca Barker, Vice Principal 


Google Meet Attendees: Ashley Hull – Vice President, Alison Fischer, Kim Augone


Minutes

  • Admin Update – Karen Caldwell, Principal 

    • Kickball event was supposed to be 9/2 and was cancelled due to extreme heat. Hoping to reschedule, possibly early November. New date will be shared when determined. 

    • Mr. Rau, PE Teacher, has recently resigned. Mrs. Caldwell has some interest and several applicants, and is hoping to fill the position soon. 

    • New basketball hoops for big playground are being ordered. The original ones decided upon are backordered for a year, so new ones had to be identified.

    • Parent University event happening on 9/23.

      • This is in-person at BES and allows parents to select several mini-sessions to attend where they can learn about various ways to support their students. 

      • Kids would be allowed to attend and there would be separate activities to keep them busy, so that childcare is not a barrier to parents attending. **This applies to elementary school age children only, though.**

      • PTO is invited to do a session at this event if we want.

      • Lacey is organizing a Marco’s pizza pre-order event for that night to make dinner easy for families, as well. 

    • STREAM Night scheduled for February 25th 

    • Mrs. Caldwell would like to incorporate a Farm Day into the schedule in the spring semester to tap into the farming community of which Bethesda is a part. Not yet scheduled. 

    • Shari suggested a Related Arts Night which she has previously participated in when she was an art teacher. 

    • Jen suggested a Multicultural Day or Night event, as well. 

  • Teacher Update – Mrs. Johnston could not attend but gave her notes to Lacey

    • Only recent request is that Ms. DiCarlo has asked for an iPad remote (about $25). 

    • Mrs. Caldwell suggested that teachers should first use their $100 reimbursement allocation from the PTO, which are already built into the budget, and then submit requests for PTO to purchase anything beyond that on which the Board will vote. Mrs. Caldwell will send a reminder to staff about this. 

  • Treasurer Report – Glenis 

    • The PTO reimburses teachers up to $100 every year for any school supplies they purchase on their own. The link to the form does not work well from school using a WCS email address due to firewall/spam blockers, but works fine from home using a personal email address. It’s recommended that teachers use this option moving forward. 

    • So far this year 4 teachers have submitted receipts for reimbursement and checks have been distributed for those. 

    • Glenis and Lacey were able to go to the bank together recently. They removed several former PTO members from the bank account and added Lacey to the account. Both received debit cards. 

      • The banker suggested that we should not leave the bulk of our money in one checking account linked to two debit cards due to the risk this poses should a card be lost. They suggested we move the majority of the money into a money market account for security but also so it could potentially earn a little bit of interest. Glenis asked the Board to vote on if she could look into this and, if the option seemed like a good one, move ahead with moving the money to a new account. Vote passed. 

      • Mrs. Caldwell raised the question about whether or not we need an official fundraiser documented if we are going to earn interest on the account because it is technically raising money. Glenis will be asking Rachel the CPA about this and other questions related to whether or not this is a good idea and feasible for our group. 

      • Kim Augone’s boss works in finance and she offered for him to meet with the PTO to discuss options, types of accounts, etc. 

    • We are paying $120 a year for a Canva account. Lacey and Victoria are subs in WCS schools so they get access to the educator version of Canva. Glenis will look into cancelling our paid subscription if it isn’t needed. 

  • Room Parents 

    • All positions have been filled and names/contact compiled into a spreadsheet by Lacey. 

    • Lacey will share currently list with Mrs. Caldwell who will circulate it among teachers to make sure any missing Room Parents are added.

    • Two zoom meetings will be scheduled soon to share info about the role of Room Parent, one during the day and one during the evening to accommodate schedules. 

  • Open Positions 

    • Spirit Nights

    • Teacher Appreciation Week 

    • Santa Visit/Elf Shop 

    • Dodgeball

    • Kickball

    • Back to School Bash

    • Summit Spirit Night

    • Kinder Sneak a Peek

    • Yard Signs

    • Supply Kits

  • Spirit Nights 

    • Marco’s Pizza – won by 5th grade 

    • Culver’s – won by 3rd grade 

    • Next scheduled is BoomBozz Pizza on 9/14

      • Mrs. Caldwell will get teacher volunteers for each hour 

    • All kids are supposed to get a colored ticket by their grade level to drop off when they attend a Spirit Night. The winning grade with the most participation gets a prize. Not all teachers pass out tickets in a timely fashion and many kids lose their tickets between school and home. Because of this, we always need to have a PTO member at the Spirit Night event with paper and pen to take tallies of students without a ticket to add to the count. 

    • A note was raised that many families, especially the new ones, do not all know how the Spirit Nights work, what the tickets are for, and if they can participate if they don’t have a ticket. PTO will send out info about this to help clarify. 

  • Communication

    • There is a list of PTO Board members’ contact info, a list of Room Parent contact info, and a larger list of all school parent contact info minus those who have opted out of communication. Angie will be collecting all lists to make sure volunteer opportunities, monthly calendars, and newsletters (if we revive them) are sent to all lists. Monthly meeting calendar invitations and minutes will be sent to the Board via email and minutes will also be posted on the PTO website (www.bethesdapto.com).  

    • Apparently, the BES PTO had a newsletter at one point. The idea was suggested we bring it back. The PTO items sometimes get lost in Mrs. Caldwell’s monthly newsletters since she always has a lot of updates to include. We could send it with the monthly calendar of events we plan to send. 

    • Lacey would like to start sending a sign-up genius link for all volunteer opportunities in a given month during the month prior. Angie will start doing this around the 15th of each month with the upcoming events starting in September for October opportunities. 

    • Jen brought up that PTO memberships and what is included is not clear to new parents so we will be sending out more information about how the membership levels work. 

  • New ideas for increasing membership

    • We already changed our PTO membership tiers this year to include more tickets to events and extras to make it a one-stop-shop for the year’s purchases

      • For example, different tiers now include BBQ tickets, spirit shop credits, a yearbook, family dance tickets, etc. 

      • A question was raised about how we would keep track of who had already bought memberships that included tickets and how tickets would be distributed prior to events. Glenis has all this data tracked in a spreadsheet and will be thinking through best way to distribute tickets to events throughout the year. 

    • Some other schools charge a yearly investment per household (usually $100-$200) and this is their main fundraiser for the year. This gives every household an automatic PTO membership and they can then offer events during the year without entrance fees such as their BBQs/festivals and family dances. 

    • Another idea is that we could provide an incentive to sell PTO memberships. Perhaps any homeroom with 100% participation would win something such as bagels for breakfast. 

    • Mrs. Caldwell and Mrs. Barker are willing to provide in-school rewards as fundraising benchmarks are met, such as roller skating through the halls, letting students tape them to the wall, etc. 

    • If we sold enough memberships to raise $15,000 we could possibly not charge entrance fees to the BBQ but might still need to charge for games and other parts of the event. It would depend on how much was raised in total. 

  • Backyard BBQ 

    • Molly Holcomb has accepted position of event chairperson 

    • Instead of charging for entrance fees, game tickets, and other events separately, this year we could offer an “all inclusive” wristband for perhaps $15 or $20. Then families would not have to separately purchase tickets for games. We would still offer a lower entrance-only option for families that did not want to buy the wristband. Need to continue to discuss this option. 

    • We already have several submissions for the auction. There was a discussion about things we could include in the auction that the school/PTO can provide, such as a Principal for a Day, Vice Principal for a Day, Artist for a Day with Mrs. Pittsley, Coach for a Day with new PE teacher (if one is hired by then), pizza party for your homeroom, front row seats to the 5th grade promotion event, front row seats to the kindergarten event, etc. We will ask the SRO if he is allowed to put students in his car and, if so, perhaps we can auction off a ride in his patroller. 

      • We might be able to auction off a “skip the car rider” parking spot so the winner has a designated parking spot and does not have to wait in the line, or a teacher/staff member designated parking spot. Mrs. Caldwell will check if we are allowed to do so. 

    • The dunk tank was popular last year but extremely cold for the participants. Perhaps this year we will do pie-in-the-face instead using whipped cream on a paper plate. 

    • DJ is booked. 

    • Star Dancer Studio will be performing but not on a stage this year. It was too slippery and became dangerous last year. 

    • Touch a Truck is scheduled including a helicopter, Atmos Energy truck, fire engine, and others. 

    • Several food trucks are booked. 

  • Other Items 

    • Custodian Appreciation Day is October 2. Shari asked if we planned to celebrate our custodians that day. We do celebrate all the recognition days for members of the BES staff but do not have a specific idea in mind yet for this first one this year. Any ideas are welcome! 

    • Next meeting: Wednesday, October 7th, 9:15am in the Teachers Lounge accessed through the front office.

Bethesda PTO