It’s been a wild school year and now – it’s over!
Hope everyone has a great summer!
The PSA is still active and planning for next year. We’d love to have you join us!
Wow! What a year 2020 was. It felt like it lasted much longer than it did and I’m sure we’re all wondering when the world will return and we can all back to something approaching normal. I don’t have any answers on that subject, but I do know the PSA is working hard to support our teachers and staff and do what we can to help them provide an enriching distance learning experience for our children.
Our amazing teachers are working harder than ever and everyone, children, parents, teachers and staff are doing their best to get through this crazy time.
So, what is the PSA doing?
In December we raised $1,015 to assist those families that might have needed just a little bit more for Christmas. Thank you to all that donated.
We have also have a still active Book Drive Book Drive that has raised $270 so far.
We don’t have any general fund raisers scheduled for the rest of the school year. We are working on getting some swag set up – things like t-shirts, hoodies, mugs, cups and other stuff. We’ll let you know here and on Face Book when we get that rolling.
If you’d like to make a donation to your child’s teacher to have a little bit more for class enrichment, each teacher has a fundraising page dedicated to that class. Any money you donate WILL go to that teacher, for that class, to be used for enrichment materials. I’m sure you’ve noticed that teachers are occasionally sending home a bit more than photocopies. In a lot of cases, that extra material is coming out of the teacher’s pocket and isn’t reimbursed by the school. The PSA budgets $250 to each teacher to supplement their class for enrichment material. The additional donations families make to teachers are on top of what the PSA has already budgeted.
Please consider donating to your child(‘s/rens) teacher(s) here: Mountain View School PSA Fund Raisers
And finally, on that fund raising page you’ll see a fundraiser for a 2021 school camping trip. This is a traditional before school, community building camping trip that we missed in both 2019 and 2020. Hopefully, the world will be back by August this year and we can once again meet before school starts for our kiddos to see each other in person after a long, far too long, time away. The reservation is made, some REALLY vague planning is in place and we’ll let you know if this is going to even be feasible around early July. Fingers crossed.
Stay safe. Stay sane. Stay hopeful.
HOLIDAY GIFT FUND RAISER
This year, we have a $1,000 Holiday fund fund raising goal. That would let us either help a few more families or provide a little more to what we normally do. We know it’s not a lot but we hope it’s enough to help just that little bit more.
It’s been a long tradition of our school to hold a fund raiser for families of our school that may need a little extra for the holiday season. How can this be a long tradition for a brand new school, you ask? Well, this tradition predates the Mountain View School’s formation and stretches back to our charter school days.
Every holiday season, the PSA has raised money from the community to provide just a little bit more for those families that could really use that little bit more. The PSA doesn’t know who those families are. We don’t ask. We’ve relied on teachers to share with the Principal which children could be helped by the PSA. We raise the money and provide a cash gift to about 20 families of about $25.
BOOK FAIR
We are also holding a virtual book fair. If you have some lightly used books that you’d like to pass on to some new children to enjoy, there will be a box set up at the school for you to drop off those books you’d like to share. If you’d prefer to donate money instead of books, we have a CheddarUp fund raiser set up for that.
So, head over to the Fundraising link and click on the Special Fund Raising events link Special Fund Raising Events and pick a fund raiser!
We have an official school website: https://mountainview.sandiegounified.org/home
It’s not finished yet, but it’s ours. Of course, we aren’t finished yet, either, and are still growing and learning.
We are still taking applications for new students from outside the San Diego Unified district. There is an choice application on the San Diego Unified website: https://sandiegounified.org/departments/neighborhood_schools_and_enrollment_options/choice_application
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Open in new tab I hope everyone is staying safe and healthy and managing the stresses of distant learning and daily Zoom meetings. For those of you going to work outside the home, I hope that you have a safe environment to work in.
It’s been a while since we’ve had a membership election for the PSA board. We have had a chaotic year and half and counting. The COVID-19 restriction on gatherings make the way we normally do board elections just about impossible. Since we can’t really get on campus, getting everyone to participate in one place isn’t going to happen.
In the past, elections for the board happened before or after the CoOp board met for their monthly public meeting on campus. Well, we’re not part of the CoOp anymore and the San Diego Unified school board isn’t going to hold a monthly meeting in our school’s cafeteria/auditorium even if the COVID-19 restrictions weren’t in place.
The current board is working out the details of how to hold an election for new board members. All the positions will be open for nominations. Most of the current board plans on running again for the positions they hold now. The only position that’s completely open is President. Our current President, Patricia Bacame has held that post for over 3 years now and she is ready to give someone else a chance.
I just want to say that Patty has been awesome as PSA President and held us together through the craziness and chaos of the last year and half. Without Patty, I don’t know that we would still have a functional PSA. Thank you Patty for your selfless service.
The positions that will be vote on are:
President – no nominees yet
Vice-President – Stefanie Kurtz-Harris
Secretary – Patricia Bacame
Treasurer – James Burk
Member-at-Large – Ariel Jen
Member-at-Large – Rebecca Villa
Member-at-Large – Erica Ruiz
Please consider running for an office (especially President!). The PSA works best when we are involved as parents. Don’t let being President of the PSA scare you from running. We work amazingly well as a team and support each other completely.
Once we have details on how we are going to conduct the election and some additional nominees, look for an email on how to vote.
Our school has been through a very chaotic year and some change. We have seen our student, parent, staff and beloved teaching staff decimated by neglect and outright hostility. We have seen people we once thought of as allies treat us like the ugly girl friend being dumped for greener pastures and our journey likened to a roller coaster ride that it was time to leave.
Yet, we still stand strong, our heads unbowed to anyone.
NO ONE is going to make us feel like second class citizens or dismiss our worth and our community.
Through all the chaos, the Parent Staff Association has been there. We hosted Buenos Dias Cafe once a month. We helped our teachers buy supplies for their classrooms. We donated some of the funds you helped raise to some of our families most in need at Thanksgiving and Christmas. And, at the end of the year, we gifted ALL of our teachers and staff with a $100 Christmas bonus as a “Thank You!” to our loved teachers and staff as the CoOp booted us from their world.
I suppose I should introduce myself. I am James Burk, the Treasurer of the PSA. I volunteered to be on the PSA last July because I could no longer stand by and let others shoulder the burdens I could see piling up. From the moment I took over as Treasurer, I have worked to ensure that the money the PSA raised was dedicated to OUR teachers and OUR school. When I took over, we had no way to spend OUR money without permission from the CoOp. We had teachers that had been waiting months to get reimbursed for money they spent out of their own pockets to enrich their classrooms. I found a way to to get that money flowing again and reduced months long waits for reimbursement to less than a week in many cases.
As it became clear that the CoOp was going to abandon us, our PSA President Patty Baca, PSA Vice President Stefanie Kurtz-Harris, myself and others worked tirelessly to ensure that the CoOp didn’t steal OUR money when they closed our campus. To that end, the PSA, like the school in general, started the process of reinventing ourselves. We incorporated the PSA and opened our own bank account under OUR control. No longer would be be hostage to someone else’s whims. Thanks to the tireless efforts of many people, we were able to open our new account in January 2020 with our old funds to the tune of $12,420.11.
We have continued the process of incorporation and are now waiting on the IRS to approve our application for tax exempt status.
Through all of this, we continued supporting our teachers and staff.
The PSA is continuing to reinvent itself. This website is just an example of that process.
Welcome to the Mountain View School Parent Staff Association!
