Happy Thanksgiving

I hope that you all enjoyed a wonderful holiday with those who you love. I was lucky to be able to visit my inlaws in Ada, Oklahoma where they own some land. They kindly invited my mom and sister as well, so we had a full house. In a brilliant move, we chose to wait until the temperature dropped below freezing to have our annual campout. We camp in tents on their land every Friday after Thanksgiving. I was VERY THANKFUL for my new extra warm sleeping bag, which was shared by my little dude, Colton. I will be VERY THANKFUL next year, when Colton will get his own extra warm sleeping bag....

Don't forget to turn in your participation forms for the Barnes and Noble Day on the 11th. It is so much fun that I almost forget we are also raising a ton of money for our school!

Lastly, I am thankful to each of you who bothers to read this blog every once in a while. I hope that occasionally I am able to help someone with an answer (not this week, sorry) or make someone smile (hope so). Talk to you soon....

What amazing parents and staff we have at DCE!!!

We have yet to get back the totals on our Spring Creek Night, but what a wonderful success. Roya Tompkins, our Fundraising Chair for the PTO, did a fabulous job scheduling the night for DCE and getting the information out to the parents and staff. The line was out the door for over an hour and a half. Thank you to every parent who took their children to Spring Creek to either eat there or pick up their food. A HUGE thank you to every teacher or administrator that worked all day and then went and worked up at Spring Creek for our school. It is going to pay off in a BIG BIG way. Spring Creek is the only restaurant that the PTO partners with for school nights. They are incredibly generous in their gifting. Most restaurants give 15% of only the school's receipts. Spring Creek gives 25% of the entire night's receipts regardless of whether that ticket came from a DCE parent. Last year, we received a check from Spring Creek for $1400. I suspect the check this year will be even larger. For one night's work, that is FABULOUS!!! Last year, we had 89 students. This year we had 177. That is twice as many students who participate, which goes to show what an amazing group of parents we have at DCE this year.

Thank you for all you do to support our school. I know we ask a lot of you and you never let us down,
Lisa

Donation Requests: My point of view....

As we move into the holiday season and it seems like we are asked for donations every time we turn around, I thought this was a good time to say thank you. Thank you to everyone who has ever donated to our school in the form of their time, their food, their skills or their money. All of those donations are equally important. As one moves higher in the PTO offices, you really see just how important raising funds are for our school. Every year, the district expects more and more from our school but has less and less of their own dollars to give to support it. I am amazed at how much the PTO actually gives toward the day to day running of the school and contributes toward its budget. Because of this, sometimes the officers can get a bit wrapped up in our desire to meet our financial goals. We know how important it is to our kids. When we get "wrapped up" this way, we can sometimes come across as pushy and insensitive and we may inadvertently hurt someone's feelings. This is NEVER our intent. I hope everyone realizes that the PTO is made up of volunteers. None of us makes a dime for all the sweat and time we pour into helping the school. We are not trained. We have no formal education on how to raise money or run a business (and that is what we do). We are just given the job and told to go for it. If we didn't succeed, we would let a LOT of teachers, administrators and our own kids down. That is unacceptable to me. That being said if there are some hurt feelings along the way because we were too pushy, I hope that those parents can forgive us. It truly was not our intent. We can always grow and learn from our mistakes and do better next time, but we hope everyone remembers that we are just trying our best and are doing it without any guidance, pay or much support.

So when you see us begging for you to go to Spring Creek or Barnes and Noble Weekend or asking for yet another batch of cookies, please remember we wish we didn't have to mention it either. We just are doing the best we can to support the school the best way we know how.

Thank you again for listening, helping and supporting Denton Creek and your PTO.
Lisa