Author: PTA

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Meetings Uniform Sales

Welcome Back!

We hope that you all had a lovely half term break and enjoyed some of the sunshine we had! We’ve been really busy over the half term break – more about that later!

AGM on Wednesday

This Wednesday, we are hosting our next meeting and it’s an important one – our AGM. This is where the Committee reports on what the charity has achieved this past year, then resigns – and we vote in a new committee to run the PTA until 2024. 

We need at least 12 members present at this meeting to meet our legal requirements as a charity, so please, please do come along if you can – we promised to keep it as brief as possible! If you can’t make it in person, we will be providing a way to participate virtually – please register here for that.

If you’re interested in joining the committee and helping us organise fundraising for the school, this is a great opportunity. We are specifically looking for a Secretary and a Deputy Chair. Please do let us know if you are interested in either of these roles and if you’d like to chat about it beforehand, please do drop us a line, we’d be happy to talk. 

We are delighted to be hosting our AGM at Il Porto, our new & local pizzeria run by a lovely Coopers Lane Family. Thank you to Baci for hosting us!  So, please do come along and support the PTA as well as enjoy a glass of wine or soft drink and a slice of pizza!

Uniform Shop Revamped and Reopened

The PTA were busy over the half term break and, with some help from our lovely volunteers, we have given our preloved uniform shop a makeover! You can see the results below.

It is now so much easier to find what you are looking for and to sort out donations much more quickly. The makeover has also given us a chance to see exactly what stock we have and what we need. We really need purple cardigans in all sizes as well as PE t-shirts in all colours and Coopers Lane backpacks.

We DON’T need any more donations of grey items or white polo shirts for the moment as we have loads! 

We have also sorted out all our lovely purple gingham dresses – so get your order in now for the summer term.

The shop will officially reopen on Weds 22 Feb @ 3pm and online orders are now also open.

Dates for your Diary

Quiz Night – 24th March

Our popular end of term annual quiz night for parents and staff will take place on Friday 24 March @ 7pm. Tickets are on sale from Monday 20th – so grab your friends & family, form a team of no more than 8 people and come along to one of our most popular fundraising events!

There will be pizza available to buy from Dough N Go (run by Reception parent Daniel), a limited bar and a raffle!!

Tickets cost £5 online or £6 on the door.

Easter treats sale – 30th March 

We will be hosting an end of term Easter Treats sale for all years on Thurs 30 March from 2.30pm. 

Categories
Meetings

Notice of AGM

All parents, carers & staff are hereby invited to attend Coopers Lane PTA’s Annual General Meeting:

Wednesday 22nd February 2023, 7.45pm at Il Porto – the new pizza restaurant opposite Grove Park Station*.

Online participation and voting will be available – please register here.

As per our constitution, we will be disbanding the current committee and re-electing all roles. The roles up for re-election are:

  • Chair
  • Secretary
  • Treasurer
  • Co-Treasurer
  • 2x Trustees

We are also hoping to appoint a new role of Deputy Chair, if possible.

If you are interested in potentially filling any of the above roles, and would like to discuss what’s involved, please drop the committee a line and we’ll be happy to chat: pta@cooperslane.org.

* Il Porto is run by a Coopers Lane family, and they are very kindly supporting us in hosting this meeting – please come along and check out their pizza!

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Updates

£3,500 Raised!

As we finish up the Autumn term and leave school for a few weeks of well-deserved holidays, we wanted to post an update on our fundraising for the year so far.

In this first term of the year, you’ve helped us raise a massive £3,500 for the school. A large proportion of this – over £1,600 – came from the raffles at the school Christmas performances, so thanks to everyone who bought a ticket – and to all those who helped us to sell them at eleven shows across three weeks.

Our other events this term were:

  • Christmas Jumpers and Treats – over £300 raised
  • Pre-loved Uniform – over £370 raised
  • Coats and Costumes – over £250 raised
  • Bingo Bonanza evening – over £680 raised
  • Non-Uniform Day – over £230 raised

This is a fantastic start to the year, so thanks again for all your support. We will be in touch with details of our plans for the Spring term in January.

Categories
Updates

Meetings Survey Results

Thanks to everyone who completed our recent survey about when, where and how we should hold our meetings in 2023.

We received a good number of responses, and have considered what we should do based on the information received.

You can read the results and our decisions as a Google Document here, or as a PDF here.

We will be taking action based on this research beginning with our first meeting in January, which will also be our AGM.

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Events Updates

Christmas Treats – £370 Raised!

Thanks to everyone who came to our Christmas treats sale on Thursday! With your support we sold almost everything and raised over £350 for the school.

Special thanks also to Amanda for making so many snowmen and bags of reindeer food and to Nicola and Clare for our amazing new PTA bunting!

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Events

Coats and Costumes – £247 Raised!

Thanks to everyone who participated in our Coats and Costumes sale on 20th October.

We were overwhelmed by the number of donated items, and also by the turnout on the day – thanks to everyone who showed up despite the less-than-ideal weather.

We raised a grant total of just under £250 for the school.

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Meetings

Meeting 29th September

Our first meeting of the year on Thursday 29th is an important one, as we’ll be discussing what the school has asked us to raise money for this year, and what we plan to do – so if you have an idea for an event or fundraiser, this is a great time to share it.

We’ll also be welcoming new members, so please do come along and meet everyone if you haven’t before. We’ll provide drinks and snacks and explain what the PTA does and how you can get involved.

We’re meeting just a few minutes from the school:

Thurs 29 Sept, 7.30pm
St Augustine’s Church Hall (Google Maps link here)

The hall has car parking, but please do use public transport if possible. If you have any access requirements, or if you cannot attend but would be interested in viewing a live stream or video of the event, please get in touch.

Categories
Meetings Updates

Welcome Back

How is it September again? Welcome back to school – we hope you had a restful summer break. We know there’s a lot going on, so here are a few key dates for your diary:

Welcome and Planning Meeting – 29th Sept

Our first meeting of the year is an important one, as we’ll be discussing our plans and fundraising goals for the new year. We’ll also be welcoming new members, so please do come along if you haven’t before – we’ll provide drinks and snacks and explain what the PTA does and how you can get involved.

Thurs 29 Sept, 7.30pm at St Augustine’s Church Hall (5min from school)

Pre-Loved Uniform Sales – Weekly

We have loads of pre-loved uniform – thanks for all your donations over the summer – and will be opening our shop regularly over the next few weeks – from 3pm to 3.30pm in the KS1 playground on:

Monday 12th Sept
Thursday 22nd Sept
Monday 26th Sept
Thursday 6th October
Monday 10th October ** HELP NEEDED! **
Thursday 20th October ** HELP NEEDED! **

We can only run the shop with the support of our volunteers. If you could help on one of the last two dates, please get in touch – thanks!

Bingo – 18th November

We’re planning to run our popular bingo night fundraiser on the evening of Friday 18th November, at school. More details TBC after our first meeting of the year.

Stay up to date!

The best way to keep up to date with our events, uniform sales and other news is our occasional email newsletter – if you haven’t already, you can sign up below.

Categories
Updates

End of Year Update

£12,000 raised thanks to your support!

We have successfully completed our first full year since the pandemic, back in person – and it feels amazing! It has been brilliant to see you all at our events, supporting the PTA and our amazing school. We are incredibly grateful for your support.

This year we held several pre-loved uniform sales, Christmas raffles, a hilarious Bingo Night with award winning comedian/cabaret artist ‘Aidan Sandler’, a fab Quiz Night where the winners were decided by just two points and a fantastic Summer Fair – you can see more photos here – that saw the biggest turnout ever for a PTA event and raised over £7,000.

The fundraising target set for us by the School this year was to raise £20,000 for the new library – an incredibly ambitious goal, and more than twice what we’ve been asked for in previous years. We didn’t quite get there, but we did raise an amazing £12,000 with your help.

The school managed to borrow some funds to complete the library on time – it’s pictured below – and we’ve given £12,000 to the school this week to pay off more than half of that cost.

The new library!

So thank you for supporting our events this year, and for all your donations – and a special thanks to those who also volunteered their time to help at our events. The PTA Committee is a small team of only seven parents and we simply can’t run all our events without your help – the more volunteers we have, the more we can do, and the more we can raise for the school.

We are already planning our events for Autumn, and if you can spare even half an hour to help us at one that would be greatly appreciated – the dates are all below, please do get in touch!

Dates for your Diary

We have an exciting schedule of events happening next year, so make sure you add these dates to your diary!

Welcome back PTA meeting – Thurs 29 Sept @ 7.30pm
Bingo Madness – Fri 18 Nov @ 7.30pm
Can you Ceilidh? – Fri 3 Feb @ 7.30pm
Annual Coopers Quiz Night – Fri 24 Mar @ 7.30pm
A Night at the Movies with a twist! – Fri 19 May @ 7.30pm
Summer Fair – Sat 24 June @ 12noon – 4pm

Categories
Events

Summer Fair 2022

Thank you so much to everyone who came along to our Summer Fair this year. We’re thrilled to say that it was our biggest and most successful fundraising event to date. At the end of a very busy day we had raised a total of £7133 for the school – a huge step towards our target for the year of £20,000.

Special thanks to all the volunteers who helped us prepare for, set up and run the fair on the day – whether it was making posters, fixing bikes, sending emails or running a stall for hours on a hot and busy Saturday. Your support is what makes this kind of event possible.