Board Minutes from September 15, 2007

Present: Robin Hubbard, Jeanette Gyukeri, Jordan Young, Alison Lockwood (board rep.), Margy Levine Young (recording).

Here are my notes from the first POGO meeting. I'll put them on the web after Lars sets us up with a web site. - Margy

Jeanette Gyukeri, Robin Hubbard, Jordan Young, Alison Lockwood, and I met on September 15th to start up POGO for the year.

Here's what the school needs from POGO:

Kingsland Bay Days (fall and spring): food
Soccer games: check with Erik
Parents Night : drinks and cookies, a table with information, someone to make an announcement
Grandparents Day: coffee, tea, and goodies at the beginning of the day; donut holes for the kids at break; themed potluck lunch for grandparents; photographer
Halloween: cider and donuts
Creation and Discovery Days (fall and spring): ask Gail
Exhibit Days (winter and spring): ask Gail
MLK Day: ask Gail (join Middlebury College events?)
Exam weeks: bagels at snack time (drinks?)
DV7 Creative Writing Night: ask Elaine (collect ingredients?)
DV 10-11 Writing Night: ask Elaine
Gala: arrange venue, food decorations, servers, entertainment, silent auction, and live auction (appoint chairs)
Recognition and Graduation: ask Gail
Thank You to Faculty and Staff: a basket for each (Cathy Byers also suggests that we surprise the faculty and staff with little things during the year -- soup and break, cookies,flowers, etc.)

Fundraising needs:

POGO has been budgeted to raise $25K, which hasn't been realistic
We can do a service auction in the fall, which raises about $2K
The Gala raised $18K last year
We can do other things, like cookie dough (Rhino Foods), frozen pizzas (Rhino Foods), wrapping paper, Seeds for Change (ask Nancy Lindberg), Brecks Bulbs (owned by Gardeners Supply), local restaurants (Am. Flatbread, Two Brothers)
Kathleen Smith suggested an international cookie sale where we bake samples, take orders, and then deliver home baked cookies, charging by the pound or by the dozen

Other possible activities:

Lecture series to raise community awareness of Gailer and provide education for Gailer faculty, staff, parents, and students
Do something with the international students and Gailer and the International Students Organization (ISO) at Middlebury College
Do something with the Coalition of Essential Schools

Here are tasks we have assigned, because they are needed right away:

Arrange drinks and cookies for 9/18 Parents Night: Robin will do cookies, Jordan and Margy will do drinks
Inventory plates, sups, etc: Robin will do
Set date for Gala at Vergennes Opera House: Robin will Lars to talk to them
Make a list of all the times we need food: Jeanette will make this and post it at the Parents Night so we can ask every parent to sign up for at least one time
Arrange for someone to talk at Parents Night: Jordan and Margy will introduce POGO and Jeanette will ask for volunteers for food
Announce POGO dates on Gailer mailing lists: Margy did this
Ask Nancy Lindberg to join us: Margy did this
Photographer at Grandparents Day: Robin

Here are other tasks we need to do right away:

Contact the Middlebury Community House about holding the Grandparents Day lunch there (10/5), if we want to do this
Who publicizes Grandparents Day?
Set a date for the service auction: November would be best (11/15?).
Organize the service auction: Get donations, do PR, arrange for auctioneer, organize potluck. Jordan and Margy can do the database, make the catalog, and print receipts.
Send the sign-up list for food events to the parents list (after Jeanette creates the list and we post it at Parents Night)
Set up a POGO web site: Margy asked Lars Hubbard, who is redoing the Gailer web site. He is creating a site (probably a wiki) at http://pogo.gailer.org for us. Margy and Jordan will figure out how to use it and can set us all set up on it. Margy will put these notes on the POGO wiki.

Here are other tasks we need to do:

Make a list of the tasks that we need to do and the volunteer jobs that we need to fill
Ask Erik if he needs our help at soccer games
At the next POGO meeting, ask Gail if she needs help with Creation and Discovery Days, Exhibit days, whether she has ideas for a lecture series, whether she thinks we should do something for MLK Day
Ask Elaine if she needs help with DV7 Creating Writing night or DV 10-11 Writing Night
Find volunteers to run the Gala (food, decoration, serving, silent auction, live auction, entertainment)
Ask Kathleen Smith for her ideas about international students doing something with the International Students Org. at Middlebury College
Arrange for a board rep. to come to POGO meetings, or have a POGO rep. on the board
Ask Barb Dozetos (at PCC) or Tina Giangrande (Co-op Insurance) for the list auction items from last year

- Margy Levine Young, 9/16/2007