Welcome Back & Here We Go!

Welcome back, 167 family! We hope everyone had a wonderful holiday break filled with lots of happy new memories of family, friends, and fun. As the second week draws to a close, we wanted to take this time to acknowledge the amazing parent volunteers who came out to help with the Longwood Holiday Shop! Thank you, Brittany Ellis, Paige Love, and PTO Grandma Catherine Askew (aka Secretary Jennifer’s Mom), for donating your time and coming out to help our Longwood kids have a great shopping experience! Hickory Bend mom Raquel Parker and BJHS mom Pelkie Roberson , a very special thank you for stepping up for a school and kids that weren’t yours to make their experience the best it could be! Teamwork TRULY does make the dream work! Those days we didn’t have the extra help were *quite* challenging so every moment you all spent on the Elf Squad made such an incredible difference!! Here’s to you ladies and to hoping next year we have so many volunteers, all four schools not only have a Holiday Shop again but we have to turn down volunteer requests! :) And we would be remiss without a huge thank you going out to PTO husband extraordinaire John Cece for helping with unpacking, set up, sales, loading, and transporting! Thank you, thank you!

Not pictured: Paige Love, John Cece

Next Parent Meeting

Our next Parent Meeting is coming up on Friday, February 1 at 6:30pm at Brookwood Middle School (RSVP here). As we find ourselves in a transitional phase, we are taking this time to refocus our efforts and we need our parents to come out. Your input is in.val.u.a.ble! Sadly, no parents turned out for our last meeting at the end of November, yet down the hall, the cafeteria was full of parents at a Glenwood Hawks meeting. While involvement in sports and fine arts is an exciting and important part of a student's educational career, so is being just as involved in the every day, academic part of their school life, especially at these crucial ages. This is where our kids learn to value education. This is where those lifelong social and learning memories start to form. Your presence in this part of their development is critically important.

To succeed and serve our students, teachers, schools, and families through this organization, we need everyone to step up, in whatever ways they can, big or small. We have 1200 students in School District 167, which works out to 600-700 families, minimum, with roughly that many sets of parents and guardians. Seven stepped up for the Halloween Dance. Originally 3, eventually 5 for the Holiday Shops. Ten parents (plus 2 grandmothers) from a school district with 1200 kids..

The PTO is here to serve and enrich our kids' educational experience in 167. We can't do it without YOU. Without the involvement of our parents, we will be crippled. If service is important to you, if this is something you value, if this is an organization you believe serves a purpose and can and should become an integral part of our school district, please join us on February 1st!

We cannot wait to roll up our sleeves and get to work, with you on board :) YOU are the PTO!!