The Committee have been made aware of at least two parents who received calls from a UK phone number purporting to be a parent calling about PTA business and meetings.
Please note that the PTA Committee will not ever phone you up, and will not ever invite you to a meeting or event individually – not via phone, not via WhatsApp, not via SMS or email.
All meetings are published on this website, and notices published via email and into our WhatsApp groups by the Committee.
The callers are attempting to steal account credentials by asking the other person to read back security codes under the pretext of “setting up a meeting”.
Please remember that you should never ever supply security codes sent via text message, for any service, to anyone else – the codes are for you to enter into a website only.
It’s been a busy half term for the PTA since we returned in September and its been great to see so many new faces get involved with our fundraising activities.
Over the past seven weeks, we have raised over £1300 through our preloved uniform shop, which has been run by the lovely Laura Oxley and her dedicated volunteers. Without Laura and her team, the committee would never have been able to open the shop as often as we have, so this has made a real difference to our fundraising this term.
The PTA has also helped out two other schools & PTAs in the local area by donating a large amount of preloved grey uniform as we have had so much donated, with not enough storage space. Both schools have been really appreciative of our donation and it’s great for us to build local links.
Alongside, our uniform sales, you helped us raise over £350 at our ‘We Scare Hunger’ costume and cake sale earlier this week. We had a great turnout, selling all our sweet treats and loads of costumes ! We can’t wait to see the kids in their recycled costumes when we go back to school on 4 November – don’t forget your food bank donations that school is collecting during the first week back.
We also hosted a very successful welcome meeting in October, have recruited a PTA Champion for nearly every year (still missing year 5 & 6), successfully distributed over 70 varsity jackets to year 6, welcomed lots of new parents to our volunteers group and have finally managed to get our amazing PTA banner hung up on the main school gates!
A huge thank you to the Committee, our volunteers and the school for your continued support. Without you, we cannot do our job!
Wishing you all a fabulous half term – we will be back in November with our charity Bingo Night, Christmas rainbow raffles and a Christmas jumpers & sweet treats sale!
At the beginning of the 2023-24 school year, the Peace Garden located at the back of the school was in a sad state and had been closed off to students for safety reasons. An area of decking had become rotten and had to be removed, and the whole area was in desperate need of some renovation:
The PTA were asked to restore the garden in time for this summer. We organised a number of volunteer work sessions throughout the year, mostly on a number of rather wet weekends, where around a dozen parents helped us dig, level, paint and plant.
We were also assisted by a number of parents with particular expertise: Ben Hardy helped with groundwork, Sam Fathi with carpentry for the new planters, Will Porter helped us with re-roofing and Cristiano Brand with construction of a new access ramp:
New equipment installed in the garden included eight large wooden planters, four new benches, a water capture system, a tool shed and tools for children to use.
The storytelling chair placed in the garden in memory of Ms Gill Gallagher in 2016 was taken to the Ringway Centre woodworking shop, where Clare, Nicola and Julie worked to restore and refinish it.
Finally, PTA trustee Sam, who had spent months cultivating plants from seed at home, assisted the school’s own Green Team with planting the first new plants and flowers of the garden. As of June, the garden has been transformed and is ready for the children to enjoy again.
£1,000 of funding for the garden was provided by Tesco as part of its Stronger Starts grant programme. The remaining costs were fundraised by the PTA throughout the year.
This has been a huge project, but the results are fantastic and we’re so happy that the garden is once again open for the children to enjoy. A huge thank – you to everyone who has helped make it happen: we couldn’t have done it without you.
This year’s summer fair will be held on 22nd June. It’s the biggest event of the school year, with performances, arts and crafts, food stalls, drinks, inflatables – and of course loads of games for the kids.
It’s also really important for the school. Last year it raised over £5,000 – which then helped fund things like new laptops to be used in class, books, equipment for the forest school, and the renovation of the garden.
But we can’t do this without your help. If we can get 50 people each doing one shift – not the whole afternoon! – we can make everything run smoothly, ensure that the kids have a great time and raise loads of much needed money for the school. If fewer people sign up, we’ll have to scale everything back, which would be a real shame.
If you can help out, please sign up at the link below – thank you. Your phone number and email will be held by the PTA only for the purposes of organising this one event and not shared with anyone else.
Thank you to everyone who bought our Hoopa Loompa bars yesterday. With your help we raised a fantastic £534 to support the school – thank you! And thanks also to our volunteers who designed, bought, re-wrapped, and sold them.
We want to offer our apologies to those who were unable to buy a Hoopa bar. The demand was far greater than at any previous after-school sale, and far exceeded our expectations and ability to supply this time around.
We also understand that holding sales after school only made it impossible for some kids to buy one – and we hope to be able to work around this by offering more ways to buy in advance, as well as more stock, in future. This will require us to acquire a specific lottery licence, which wasn’t possible at short notice this time.
But we will need your help. We are all volunteers, and to supply many hundreds of bars, to handle licensing, pre-ordering, wrapping and distribution will require more people to pitch in – so can you help us make our next sale even bigger and better? You can reach us via email, or join our WhatsApp volunteer group – all the details are here.
This Thursday, at school pickup, the PTA will be holding a sale of pre-loved costumes for World Book Day. We will also be holding our first ever Hoopa Loompa bar fundraiser.
This is a chance to support the rebuilding of the school’s peace garden, while also getting some chocolate – and a chance to win prizes.
We will have around 250 (updated: 270) unique Hoopa-branded bars for sale. Hidden within 10 of them are Golden Tickets – each of which wins a special prize for the finder and extra Golden Time for their entire class.
Each bar will cost £2.50.
As we have fewer bars than children in the school, we’re asking the community to buy thoughtfully – and very strictly no more than one per child. We want as many families as possible to be able to take part.
If this first sale is a success, we hope to run a larger sale – with opportunities for children and families to buy at different times, and perhaps with ordering in advance – in future years.
Allergy Information
The Hoopa bars are Galaxy milk chocolate. Ingredients are listed below. We will have a limited number of dairy-free bars available – please ask us for a swap after buying.
All parents, carers & staff are hereby invited to attend Coopers Lane PTA’s Annual General Meeting:
Wednesday 21st February 2024, 7.30pm for 7.45pm at Grove Park Library.
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
Trustees
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.
