A quick reminder — if you have expenses for this school year that you need to get reimbursed by the PTSA please submit your expense report by this Friday, June 18th. Here's the link to the check request form.
At this point, we don't know if school will start in-person in the Fall, but we do know the teachers and classroom organization for Queen Anne Elementary. We will have 11 classrooms as we had in 2019-20 and we're happy to share that all our teachers are returning.
Here' s the breakdown that Janine shared:
Staffing Updates:
We will see how the COVID-19 pandemic impacts SPS which, as always, SPS plans to review staffing allocations across the district in late September. If you have any questions on QAE's staffing for next year, please contact Janine. QAE was built from a belief that we are concerned, confident, and compassionate citizens of the world, that we learn everywhere; we learn together. The ongoing examples of racism are devastating and unacceptable and calls to all of us to live our pillars.
As our school year starts to wind down, our role as parents, educators and learners continue. The pillars of QAE will be ongoing pillars to live by each day even after the school calendar ends. We are thankful to our:
We are thankful for all that we’ve done, but also acknowledge that we have made mistakes and missteps. What we have done is not perfect, but we are committed to learning, growing, and doing better. We know our school and community comes from a place of many different privileges. We know these privileges require us to do the extra work for ourselves, our children, and our community. We must do this extra work for everyone. We need to ask ourselves, how can we do better at centering, amplifying, and uplifting Black lives and Black voices? How can we do a better job of supporting and uplifting Black, Indigenous, and all People of Color? A Call to Action We know that this means moving past our own discomforts. We understand we must be actively intentional to undo racism and dismantle racial oppression and use our privileged voices and spaces to demand a more equal world. The QAE PTSA is committed to doing this work by continuing our support of the QAE Families of Color (FOC). We encourage all QAE community members to engage with the QAE Families of Color and their efforts to support an anti-racist and anti-bias culture at QAE. QAE FOC’s goals are centered around community, curriculum, capacity, and culture.
The FOC sponsored events, parent trainings, and teacher trainings are intended to further these goals, but QAE FOC needs your help! We invite all families of color to connect with other families of color to create community, uplift our students of color, and continue QAE FOC’s efforts. We invite white families to connect with and support QAE Families of Color to ensure that the needs of all students are met. We know the future seems uncertain with COVID-19, but planning for the future starts now. If you’d like more information on how you can engage with the QAE Families of Color, please email Director Kay Dumlao Doherty at foc1@qaeptsa.org The PTSA is looking to our community for new volunteers to join our Board in a variety of positions. Whatever your background and availability, we would welcome your help—we truly believe this is a way YOU can make a difference in the lives of our kids and support our community. Interested? Write to the PTSA Board at board@qaeptsa.org Resources We’ve also provided some suggested resources below. Please note, this list is not exhaustive, as there are many others out there, but it can be a starting point for your student’s and family’s journey. For the Kids See this resource for Distance Learning Activities related to Black Lives Matters. For the Adult Reader (also available in Audio from the Seattle Public Library)
Organizations to Engage with or Donate to:
We thank you for your continued support and encourage you to continue the conversations with your students, family, and friends. It’s OK if the action feels uncomfortable – that’s part of the journey. It’s OK if our voice is not perfect - we will make mistakes! But we can’t be afraid to learn from them (remember, mistakes are welcome at QAE). But, it’s NOT OK to ignore it. In this historic movement, we want our students to remember how they were active agents of change. If you want more information about how QAE PTSA supports QAE FOC, please contact officers@qaeptsa.org In solidarity, Sandra Shu Nanney & Kay Dumlao Doherty QAE PTSA President & QAE PTSA Families of Color Director Like many of you, the PTSA Board team members have been juggling managing learning at home during the pandemic and how to talk/involve our kids in taking actions around the response to George Floyd's death and protests. We are thankful that QAE has been focused on social justice and will share more resources soon on how to have meaningful conversations with your kids.
In the meantime, the Board is doing the best we can to plan for the coming year, knowing there is much uncertainty. Please join us online at 8pm on Wednesday, June 10th for our Spring General PTSA meeting. We'll be covering:
Please RSVP using the form here. You'll get the Zoom meeting link after you RSVP. Hope to see on Wednesday. If you're unable to make it, but have questions/comments please write to Sandra at president1@qaeptsa.org With the sudden departure from in-person school in March, we know that your student may have some belongings at school. And you may have some library books that need to be returned.
We have time reserved on Tuesday and Wednesday to drop off books and pick up belongings. To practice physical distancing, we will be handling via drive-through and there will be set time by grade. The pick up/drop off will take place in the staff parking lot on the north side of the school. Here's the time slots: Tuesday, June 9th:
Wednesday, June 10th:
If you're unable to make the specified time or have other questions, email Principal Janine Roy at jbroy@seattleschools.org Principal Roy shared this list of resources that may be useful for our families:
---- It is important to be continuing our ongoing conversations with children about race and racism. Below are parent resources for addressing race, racism, Black Lives Matter, and the death of George Floyd. Thank you to QAE teachers Lorin Belcher, Rachel Scheer, Lauren Appel and Sarah Goldman for compiling these resources: Books/Book Lists:
Reminder: join us on Thursday evening, 6:30-8pm, for a free parent education event hosted on Zoom! Katie Gruver from Positive Parenting Seattle will be presenting on "Using Family Meetings to Reconnect, Solve Problems and Have Fun (yes, it's possible!) During COVID-19."
How to join: Please send an email to Principal Roy at jbroy@seattleschools.org and she'll share the Zoom link to you. If you feel like you’re constantly renegotiating expectations with your child(ren) about homework, chores, bedtimes, screen usage, siblings etc; if you feel like you’ve fallen back on punishments or threats and are looking for a few new ideas; if you feel like you're spending every moment together, but that very little of it is FUN; if you've been overwhelmed or disconnected or frustrated by juggling it all right now, please join us for an informative and uplifting conversation on family meetings. More details on the schedule and about Katie here... We can't be together right now, but Dr. V would love to get new books into the hands of students and families! We know these are tough times for many families, but Dr. V has put together a great list of books (and some crafting kits).
Dr. V's list includes some great books for every grade level. Secret Garden Books will donate 10% of the the purchase price of books on the list to the QAE Library. How the Book Fair works:
Questions? Please contact Dr. V at elvaldez@seattleschools.org or Secret Garden Books at 206-789-5006. In this time of staying-at-home, we've adjusting how we can support our families. The QAE PTSA will be hosting an online parent education event. Katie Gruver, of Positive Parenting Seattle, will be presenting on "Using Family Meetings to Reconnect, Solve Problems and Have Fun (yes, it's possible!) During COVID-19" on Thursday, May 14th.
If you feel like you’re constantly renegotiating expectations with your child(ren) about homework, chores, bedtimes, screen usage, siblings etc; if you feel like you’ve fallen back on punishments or threats and are looking for a few new ideas; if you feel like you're spending every moment together, but that very little of it is FUN; if you've been overwhelmed or disconnected or frustrated by juggling it all right now, please join us for an informative and uplifting conversation on family meetings. When: Thursday, May 14th, 6:30-8pm Where: Your house! We'll be hosting the meeting on Zoom. See below. Cost: This is a free event, but we are collecting donations to reimburse the presenter for her time. Any excess funds will be donated to the Ballard Food Bank. To Register: Please write to Ms. Roy at jbroy@seattleschools.org and she'll send you the Zoom link as well as the link to donate (if you can't afford to donate, no worries, we want all families to attend!) Agenda:
Some Background
See you online on Tuesday! QAE community – the PTSA has been a little quiet over the past few weeks. Like each of you, we have been navigating our new normal. Balancing work, or no work, distance learning for our kids, Zoom meetings/happy hours/classrooms AND all the dishes! Parents that are Essential Workers – THANK YOU for being essential and being there for others!
The PTSA team has been chipping away at a handful of items and wanted to give you a quick update: Auction – Thank you for participating in our first Virtual Auction. The consensus was we came together as a community and did an AMAZING job at raising money for our school, teachers and kids. Thank you to Mary Rea and Jenn Lovin for all of their hard work. Our community raised almost $95,000! Thank you for pivoting and being flexible when we weren’t sure how we were going to pull it off. Reimbursement Forms – If you have any receipts that need reimbursement. Please submit your forms and receipts using this link and email to treasurers@qaeptsa.org. Open PTSA Roles for next year – These are unprecedented times and the Board needs your help to fill next year’s leadership roles. We have a number of open roles – if you are interested, we would like to speak with you. Officers - Officers sign checks, manage the budget and expenditures, ensure legal requirements are met, and provide leadership on PTSA interests throughout the school year • President • Co-Treasurer • Secretary • Assistant Treasurer Directors - take the responsibility of specific areas of interest, along with advising and voting on issues at regular PTSA board meetings. Together with the Executive group, they form the voting members of the Board • Communications Director • Fundraising • Legislative Director • Families of Color Director • Technology Advisor Director Coordinators - They do not have a vote and are not required to attend board meetings (but are welcome and encouraged to!). They fill vital additional roles for QAE. • Co- Community Outreach & Events Coordinator • Garden Coordinator • Fund Drive • Auction Budget Season — usually this time of year we take a lot of time going through line by line of our PTSA budget to determine how much we should allocate for next year. We continue to do this work but understand there are a lot of unknowns and want to give ourselves the most flexibility for the 2020-2021 school year. Yearbook — Can you believe we are still thinking about Yearbooks?!? Send in your pictures and ESPECIALLY any fun at home pictures because we are going to have an “at home” section because this will be a most memorable part of the 2019-2020 school year. We are also working on details of a Virtual Book Fair and Virtual Parent Education event, more to come as we get those details! If you have any questions or concerns please reach out to Sandra Nanney at president@qaeptsa.org. Thank you, Sandra Nanney QAE PTSA President
We are so grateful for this Queen Anne Elementary community. What a challenging, unexpected couple of weeks it's been! Thank you for supporting our school throughout this journey. And an extra big thanks to our amazing auction leaders—Mary Rea & Jenn Lovin for continuing to reimagine and regroup after each turn of events!
Thank you for participating in both our main Online Auction and our first Virtual LIVE Auction this past Friday night. Over the course of two weeks, more than 1,000 bids were placed on 200 amazing items that were donated by you, our local business community, or crafted by our children. Your donations raised a phenomenal $84,000 to support QAE, Teachers and our KIDS!! During our auction event, we would ordinarily have made a RAISE YOUR PADDLE ask at the end of the evening to help reach our funding goal of $120,000. As we ask this of you today, we would like to stress that any amount you can give will benefit our school. Please consider the money you may have spent last Friday evening on cocktails, a babysitter, an Uber ride or a new outfit for the event and instead put those dollars towards supporting QAE. With your help today we can reach our goal and continue to say YES to:
Prior to the Raise Your Paddle at the auction event, we were planning to show this wonderful video put together by parent volunteer Chi-Ju Chen. He did a phenomenal job capturing the spirit and energy of our kids! We hope you find it as inspiring as we do, particularly in this time when our community and our kids aren't at the school. We hope this glimpse inspires you to support QAE by making a donation to Raise Your Paddle.
Please share this with your kids and your family. Hope it brings a smile! And if you are able, please Raise Your Paddle to support each one of those kids.
Thank you for your continued support of our school. Our students, staff, and family community are relying on our help as we navigate through these uncertain times together. QAE Families,
It's been a roller coaster 24 hours. We hope you survived Day 1. Thanks for those who voted in the poll. Between the Facebook votes and email responses, it was a virtual tie. We made the decision to go ahead with the "Virtual" Live Auction, happening Friday night from 7-9pm. Remember—the live Auction items will be available only during that 2 hour window, each scheduled to be auctioned off at a certain time. See the full schedule for Friday night here. We know the timing isn't perfect, but we hope you can curl up on the couch with your favorite beverage and join us online. We'll laugh and cry together while bidding on some amazing items. There's a Whistler vacation, Hawaiian getaway, Disneyland vacation as well as being principal for the day and other unique QAE experiences. All those possibilities may see a long way at the moment, but we hope they're things to look forward to. Silent Auction Runs Friday through Sunday Even if you can't make the Friday night time, our Silent Auction will open at noon tomorrow and run through Sunday evening. Basically, this includes everything that would have been displayed and bid on at the event—student art projects, class baskets, extra cool succulent garden centerpieces and student photos. You'll be able to bid on all these items through the Auction site. Even in these uncertain times, we're trying to raise the $120,000 needed to support our school that we thought would come in during the in-person event. We need your help, every family at a level you can afford. Stop by Queen Anne Frame on Friday Afternoon Get your “Virtual Party Grab Bags” people! Millie, the blue truck, will have succulent gardens, goodie bags and you can pick up your online auction winnings. The Auction team will be there in front of Queen Anne Frame tomorrow afternoon from 12-4pm! Please keep an eye out on the PTSA Facebook page and join us to converse on the QAE Community Discussions group during the live event on Friday night. Questions? We're here to answer (we're not going anywhere far). Helping Support Learning at Home Once we get through this weekend of online Auction events, we'll be working with Janine and the staff to see what the PTSA can do to help during the next 6+ weeks. As well as ways we as parents can support each other. We share your stress and worries about our kids and what lies ahead in the coming weeks and months. We hope we can use this opportunity to support each other and put our school in a good position when our kids are finally able stream into classrooms, sit semi-quietly at Monday Morning Meeting and grin while running around the playground again. We hope to see you online on Friday night at 7pm, -- Sandra and the rest of the PTSA and Auction team UPDATE: School is closed for the next two weeks. But our online Auction is going on. Let's use this time to rally together to support our students and our school!
There's been a lot of communication from the school and SPS during this crazy week. We know it's hard to keep up with everything, so here's a quick checklist of how YOU can support our students during this difficult time (all from your pajamas, with a glass of wine in hand if you wish).
Whew! Got that? Basically, keep your eyes on the online Auction site from now until Sunday afternoon. Remember, we're trying to raise the $120,000 needed to support our school that we thought would come in during the in-person event. We need your help, every family at a level you can afford. Doing it online is unprecedented and, frankly, we're juggling a lot to make it happen. But these are unusual times—we hope our community can come together over the next few days to support our school (even if it's virtually!). See you online on Friday! PS — one great upside to doing the auction entirely online: anyone can bid! Got worried grandparents on the East Coast? Neighbors who are wondering how to help? Anyone can create an account and bid online in the QAE Auction. Share with your friends and family! Here's the complete schedule for our Friday night fun. You will need to be online from 7-9pm to bid on these items! Clear your schedule, curl up on the couch and bid away. We know you don't have any other places to go that evening.
***View the catalog of Live Auction items here*** 7pm - Get ready to bid! Log on to the Facebook QAE Community Discussions group and also make sure Make sure you are logged into the Online Auction Catalog so you can start bidding. Drawing for a bottle of Fidelitas wine. To be delivered to winner right after drawing for your evening drinking. Fine Print - must live on Queen Anne for Friday night delivery. You (or your viewing group) must be “online” to confirm your prize. Either via Facebook post, messenger or text Sandra at 703-915-6421. During the below 15 minute slots - 2 live auction items will be active for bidding ONLY for the specific 15 minute interval. After the 15 minutes it will go to the highest bidder (if a bid comes in at the last moment it will be automatically extended for an additional 1 minute). 7:15 – Great Wolf Lodge AND Cooking Demo & Brunch for 8 with Chef Maximillian Petty 7:30 – Drawing for a $50 coffee card to Café Ladro. You (or your viewing group) must be “online” to confirm your prize. Either via Facebook post, messenger or text Sandra at 703-915-6421. 7:30 – Seahawks Ultimate Fan Package AND California Oceanview Condo 7:45 – Disneyland Vacation Package AND Ultimate Wine Lovers Package 8:00 - 7:30 – Drawing for a $50 coffee card to Café Ladro. You (or your viewing group) must be “online” to confirm your prize. Either via Facebook post, messenger or text Sandra at 703-915-6421. 8:00 – Suncadia Tumble Creek Stay and Play Golf Package AND Marian Built Loft 8:15 – QAE Chef For The Day AND 5 Luxurious Nights at The Westin in Whistler 8:30 – Drawing for a $50 coffee card to Storyville. You (or your viewing group) must be “online” to confirm your prize. Either via Facebook post, messenger or text Sandra at 703-915-6421. 8:30 – Luxury Kailua, Hawaii Beachside Vacation Home AND Principal For the Day 8:45 – Drawing for a $50 coffee card to Storyville. You (or your viewing group) must be “online” to confirm your prize. Either via Facebook post, messenger or text Sandra at 703-915-6421. And that's a wrap! We will aim to hold firm to the above schedule but this is a new experience for you and the auction team so please be patient as we navigate this new territory. Text message notifications will be turned on during this bidding time. Because of the short time frame of bidding – when you get outbid you will receive a text message if your phone number is already in your profile. ***View the catalog of Live Auction items here*** With Grateful Hearts We Move Forward to Support QAE
A team of parent volunteers have been working tirelessly over the past several months to bring our largest fundraiser, the annual Queen Anne Elementary Auction, to life. This year's "2020 Vision" Auction promised to be lots of fun; hosted in a new venue complete with a photo booth, a large selection of silent auction items to bid on including class baskets, teacher parties, student art, and photos, and a DJ for the after-party. We have an amazing selection of items that a group of more than 10 parent volunteers collected and numerous families have generously donated many special items including vacation getaways, sports and concert tickets, and hosted special events. While recent developments have put a damper on our fun plans, all of this work is not lost. We have an opportunity to pull together as a community in new ways and, dare we say, an opportunity to support Queen Anne Elementary in ways we have not done before. And in this spirit, we are now asking all of you to join in the effort to make this fundraising opportunity a success, despite our change in plans. Here is our game plan and timeline for our new, Virtual Auction, fittingly our "2020 Vision":
Here's what we need YOU TO DO:
Please also note that all ticket purchases to Friday's event will be converted to donations and our online system will generate new receipts that specify this donation as 100% tax deductible. Thank you for your support during these uncertain times. While these change to our school auction were unexpected, our QAE community has an opportunity to make this event a smashing success...even in the face of adversity. It is not lost on us that this month's theme for our QAE Explorers is flexibility! It has been a great pleasure to represent our school and a joy to work with a large team of parent volunteers to make this event a success. We very much appreciate your continued support and your renewed commitment to making our "2020 Vision" Virtual Auction a reality. Sincerely, Mary Rae & Jenn Lovin, QAE parents and QAE Auction Team Leads auction@qaeptsa.org |
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January 2024
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SCHEDULE2023-24 On-Site Schedule
7:55am - School Day Begins 2:25pm - Dismissal Wednesday Early Release 1:10pm - Dismissal |