We are beginning work on our Clinton School 09-10 yearbook and we need your photos.

We’d love photos that you’ve taken at school and at school events this year. Holiday celebrations, classroom celebrations, general school photos, we’d like them all.

We don’t need names of the children who appear in photos (these are for the candid photo pages), but we do need to know grade. You can send them to Maureen or upload them to our Flickr group!

Thanks very much.

Sadly, a Clinton family, with three children at our school, lost their home in a fire this weekend. We would like to do whatever we can to help them during this very difficult time and will be taking donations on their behalf.  Their home is uninhabitable and they are currently staying at a hotel.

If you would like to help, please consider donating a gift card

(Target) or a grocery store gift card. You can send these to school with your children in an envelope marked “Clinton PTA” and we will get them to the family. If you’d rather give cash, we ask that you do that in person, perhaps first thing in the morning and give it directly to Ann Bodnar, Assistant to the Principal.

We are also accepting clothing donations of clean, seasonally appropriate items. The three children in the family who are Clinton students are the size of a 3rd and 4th grade boy and a 5th grade girl.

They also have two siblings (a preschooler and a high school age brother). If we get more specific information regarding sizes we will pass it on.

Donations can be left in the front hallway of Clinton School, near the boxes where we collect food for our food pantry.

It’s been a rough few months for several Clinton families and as always, our school community always manages to be there to help in whatever we can. Please do what you can to help in this situation, and thanks, as always, for your support.

The Clinton PTA Executive Board

Our Tricky Tray/Auction is right around the corner (Saturday, March 13th). Please help us make this one our most successful ever!

Reservations
Reservation forms will be sent home soon, and if you’re interested in coming, please return them ASAP since we run out of seating quickly.

We need empty baskets
We are also searching for empty baskets for prize displays. If you have baskets you’d like to donate, please contact clintonschoolpta@gmail.com to arrange for a drop-off/pick-up. The monumental task of wrapping prizes has already begun.

Prizes? Cash donations?
First, thanks to all of you who have so generously donated prizes or asked your employer or local businesses to do so. We have lots of great loot, but can still use more. You can also give us a cash donation to help purchase prizes (make check payable to Clinton PTA and send to school in envelope marked “Tricky Tray” as soon as possible). Another alternative is to chip in with another family and purchase a prize. Electronics are always hot, as are collector items like American Girl dolls. We are trying to get as many prizes in by February 15th as possible. Our hard-working committee has lots of organizing, wrapping, gathering, and cataloging to do, so the earlier, the better.

WHAT YOU CAN EXPECT
We have many awesome prizes already so here’s a little sneak peek:
* $2000 voucher for Camp Horizons at Newark Academy (if you have three children, you’ll get $2000 off each of their tuitions).
* Four Disney Park Hopper Passes
* Amazon Kindle
* Flip Video Camera
* Pig Roast for 30 People
* Tory Burch Tote Bag
* Tickets to the Paper Mill Theater, State Theater of NJ, and much more.
* Membership to Newark Museum, Museum of the American Indian, and more.

General Information
This event is open to the entire Clinton school community (adults only). Feel free to bring your (non-Clinton) friends and family. All are welcome! An official flyer/reservation form will be sent home soon. Each ticket costs $20 and entitles you to beer, wine, soda, water, and dessert and 20 raffle tickets. We encourage you to coordinate with your friends and bring your own dinner.

Each year the PTA provides a gift of homemade holiday cookies for the teachers and staff as a way to say thank you for all they do for our kids.

Whether you can bake a few dozen cookies or help package and distribute them, it’s a great way to lend your support.

Cookies can be dropped off BY 8:30 AM on Monday, December 21st, in the cafeteria. The cookie elves will then package and distribute them from 8:30 until approximately 10:30 am.

Please see flyer for information on how to volunteer.

You may have noticed that you didn’t receive registration forms for the school play this week. This week was when we wanted to get them out to everyone. And it wasn’t because we didn’t have time to do it. Here’s the deal: we have only 9 numbers for the show, which is not enough to accommodate all of the kids who want to do it.

Here is what we could use: Beach boys, Monkeys, comedy, frankly anything. If you have an idea, go for it, if you don’t let’s talk, just plug yourself in to the system and let’s find a way to make it happen. We had 14 numbers last year, and that is really the minimum that we can work with. (Ideally we would have 15-17 numbers.)

If anyone out there thinks that the people who have come forward so far have some extra time on their hands, you’re wrong. Most of our directors work outside of the home. I myself am back in school, full time, 6 days a week. Everyone involved is going that extra mile. And what is the extra mile? It is adding, for 8 weeks, 1hour and 15 minutes to your “to do list”. Is everyone busy? sure! Are times hard? Sure! Is it exhausting in the end? Heck yes! But is it rewarding? Worthwhile? A blast? YES! YES! YES!

The show was an incredibly rewarding experience for Clinton students last year and we really want them to have it again. And remember, no directing or theatrical experience is necessary.

If you think you can help, please contact Suzanne. See the show page for more information.

As the song by The Youngbloods says, “Come on people now, smile on your brother, everybody get together try to love one another right now”  and ” you hold the key in your hand.”  And you do. We are still in need of parent directors for this year’s show. We need at least 3 more directors in order to open up registration for our children.  And, if you have an afternoon available, Tuesday-Friday or Saturday morning, we still need 15 assistant directors.

If you are afraid of commitment, and who isn’t, it is and it isn’t a huge commitment, once a week for 8 weeks, on the day and at the time that works for you, 2 weeks with tech rehearsal, which is an additional day each week, and 3 performances, cost= time.  Pay off= priceless. 

You don’t know what you don’t know.  Did you see the show last year?  Did you know that less then 1/8 of the parents who participated had ever done something like that before?  So experience is not needed.  Did you know that all it takes to do this and do it well is to bring your own passion, creativity, sense of wonder and trust in yourself and the children?  Did you know that the best way to model appropriate risk taking to your children is to do it yourself? 

Come on people now, join us, in making this happen, we had 150 kids in performance parts last year, and we are most likely to get more this year. We don’t  want to have to say no to any child who would like to participate. That can only happen if we have enough volunteers. So if you said no to our first request, or our second, don’t say no now, because with your help the answer to the question, can we do this? is “Yes we can.”

If we finally got to you, please go to the show page on the Clinton school website for more information

PS…..  THE NAME OF THE SHOW …………………………..Ok so we don’t have a name yet, do you?  If you do email us your suggestions.