PTO Meeting Minutes - May 2025

BLE PTO General Meeting
Tuesday, May 13, 2025
5:00pm - 6:15pm
Library
Attendees
Gretchen Archuleta, President, parent
Kyle Grudenfelder, New Principal
Linda O’Shaughnessy, Interim Principal
Lisa Carrell, parent
Colin Machado, parent
Guest: Eileen Swarthout, Tumwater Education Foundation President

Agenda Items
Principal’s Report
BLE Events
Books and Bingo - Debrief
Teacher Appreciation - Debrief
Family BBQ - 5/23
Garden Day - 5/31
Ice Cream Social - TBD
PTO Website
Other Business

Principal’s Report (Mrs. O’Shaughnessy / Mr. Grudenfelder)
Next Friday (5/23) is Family BBQ.
Getting ready to finish up her role here.
So thankful for the BLE PTO. Shared appreciation for Teacher Appreciation Week treats. Shared appreciation for the snacks for SBA testing.
Request to the PTO - Self-Manager Group - about 100 students. These kids are demonstrating all the things that we want kiddos to be doing. We like to celebrate them and would like to take them to the movies at the end of the year. This will be $4pp + busses. Gretchen noted this is about what is in the budget. Looking at 5/30, 9:15-12:30. ACTION: Mrs. O’Shaugnessy will continue figuring this out and follow-up.
Kids love to dig, but there’s not an appropriate place to dig and kids are not great about filling the holes that are dug. Can we provide them an appropriate place to dig? Looking into this and figuring out what this might look like. Mr. Grundenfelder talked with some folks about this and 2 concerns were brought up - that it can be used as a litter box by neighborhood cats and that it can be messy. Another idea could be a tire pit or a designated dirt digging area. ACTION: Mrs. O’Shaughnessy will follow-up with grounds about this idea.
District is pursuing delinquent accounts for food services. This is causing stress for some families. We have some funds set aside for this in the Cindy Estes Heart Fund and want to help. ACTION: Mrs. O’Shaughnessy will follow-up on the need and will talk to Jen about the fund. She will also look into whether she can use money from the Principal's Fund to help.
Field Day is coming up on June 11th. PTO will contribute some supplies and pizza for the event. ACTION: Gretchen will buy these supplies.

Books and Bingo - Debrief
Gretchen had some thoughts: Would like the prizes to be better. Would like this event to be a little bit more exciting / glitzy. Would love to have someone take this on as a committee. Needing someone to be the announcer who enjoys that.
Lisa had some thoughts: Kids enjoyed announcing numbers, but would probably be beneficial to figure out how to make this more organized. Families had fun.

Teacher Appreciation - Debrief
This went well and was well-received by staff.

Family BBQ - 5/23
We don’t do anything specific for this, but we’ll help cover costs of meals.

Garden Day - 5/31
Planning to clean out the PTO shed. Need trucks to load up stuff to take to the dump.
Discussion of refurbishing some benches. We’ll see what we can accomplish.
Planning to clean out the staff lounge.
ACTION: Gretchen to email Heather’s girl scout troop for help with this event.

Ice Cream Social Open House
We’d like to bring this back. In the past, PTO would dress up as ice cream people and serve ice cream. Would be great for parents and students to be able to meet the new principal.
Potentially could make this a PTO Recruitment event and hold this during the first PTO meeting.
Consider having a box for people to submit ideas to.
ACTION: Mrs. O’Shaugnessy will approach site team about this idea.

PTO Website
ACTION: Gretchen will talk to Katie about putting link to new PTO website on the BLE website.
For next year, would be cool to have an option to download a full-year PTO calendar that people can load into their personal calendars.
Colin is willing to take on the website.
ACTION: Lisa to work with Colin on taking over the website.

Tumwater Education Foundation (Eileen Swarthout)
Started out as a scholarship program. Awarded $32K in scholarships this year. There’s a scholarship specifically for HS seniors who went to BLE ($500) > didn’t get any applicants this year.
Working to get classroom grants up and running again.
She is the President of the Principal’s Fund. This was formed back in 2017. Aimed at helping our families in need. Would like to grow this program.
Would like to get more people to join and have more participation.
Event on May 22nd at Heritage Distillery for end-of-year event. Register to come.
www.TumwaterEducationFoundation.org
Mr. Grudenfelder asked about how we can help parents who reach out and ask for help with transportation getting to appointments.

Other Business / Reports
PTO Recruitment -
ACTION: Gretchen to bring a list of roles / committees that we would like to fill to June meeting.
ACTION: Planning to share info about PTO and an invite to the first PTO meeting during the Strong Start Conferences.
PAW Store - will need to figure out what to do about this at some point.
Next Meeting - Need to change PTO meeting to Monday, June 9th.
ACTION: Lisa to fill out the form for this new date.

Future Meeting Agendas
June:
BLE Events:
Garden Day - Debrief
Ice Cream Social
Set 2025-2026 School Year Calendar
Elect Officers, Create Committees.
Note: Committees can meet at different times if the PTO meeting times don’t work.
Volunteer thank-you?