Mary Woodward PSO

Do you enjoy being closely involved with Mary Woodward and peeking "behind the curtain" to see how things work? Do you like coming up with ideas to build our school community? Do you want to have a say in PSO fundraising efforts and how those funds are spent? Well, have you ever considered joining the PSO Board??

The election of a new PSO Board is approaching. If you've ever been interested in being on the PSO Board, now is the time to find out what being on the Board entails and what fits your interests best. While all positions are open for nominations (except President), for the 2023-24 school year we are most in need of nominations for these roles:

• President Elect
• Secretary
• Volunteer Coordinator

Nominations are welcome now and the election will be held at the PSO meeting in April. Please reach out with any questions to Danielle Smart at president@marywoodwardpso.com

Safe Routes to School encourages more kids to walk, bike, or bus to school. The next Walk and Roll to School day will be on Wednesday, February 8th.

Kids are encouraged to walk, roll, or bus to school and win cool prizes! To celebrate the day, the City of Tigard will include all students in a raffle with prizes like bright clothing, a skateboard or scooter, and a refurbished bike from WashCo Bikes!

More details to come soon. Thank you Deanna Parrott for organizing this!

You won't want to miss this very popular night!

--Friday, February 10th--Doors open at 6p--

Bingo cards will be sold at the door for $2 each or 6 for $10!

Pizza, soda, and treats will be available for sale, but feel free to bring your own snacks.

Popcorn and water are provided for free!

We thought it might be fun to show the staff just how much we adore them with a Valentine's Day themed treat-fest! We're asking for pink, red, and heart shaped treats to be brought in between Feb 8 and 13. This doesn't need to be anything big. Maybe a couple bags of candies, red juice, pink popcorn or heart shaped brownies. Homemade and store bought gifts are equally appreciated. The Staff Appreciation team will set it out for the staff to enjoy on Feb. 14.

If you're interested in being involved, we invite you to sign up here to list what you'll bring and/or get set up for a helpful auto-reminder when the time comes!

The Mary Woodward Eagle Round Up Spring Auction is in full swing. Mosey on over and get y'alls tickets now... less than one month until prices go up. Eagle Round Up Tickets

We have been roping in many great goodies to auction off this year. Check out the Mary Woodward PSO Facebook page for updates on what you can purchase at the auction. Mary Woodward PSO Facebook

We are still looking for donations and sponsors for our event. If you have something to offer up please contact the auction committee at auction@marywoodwardpso.com.

Also class baskets and art projects are underway. You should already have information about this or be receiving this information soon. Please help out your auction basket and art project volunteer by sending in requested donations. The basket that rounds up the most money $$$$ at the auction will win a class pizza party. Look forward to seeing all you partners there!

The 5th grade Ambassadors are selling Val-o-Grams soon! These are little notes that students can purchase for ANYONE in the school, allowing them to send valentines to kids outside of their own class and any staff that they like.

Val-o-Grams will be sold before school in the cafeteria

Tuesday, Feb 7th through Monday, Feb 13th 7:45-8a

Each Val-o-Gram is only $.25 and includes a lollipop.

Val-o-Grams will be delivered to their recipients on Valentine's Day.

Our next Dine Out event is planned! More info will be coming in the next couple of weeks, but plan to dine at:

Casa Lola Kitchen de Mexico

Thursday, February 23rd

12-9pm

If you have ideas for other dining events or specialty fundraisers, contact Monica Bjers at dineout@marywoodwardpso.com

The PSO is trying to keep the staff breakroom stocked with snacks and drinks to show our staff how much we appreciate them and keep them fueled. To help us out, we're asking for donations from one grade each month. For the month of February, we are asking for donations from 3rd grade families. Please drop off your donations in the wagon just inside the main doors any time during the month. Popular items include trail mix, individual snack bags, fresh fruit, yogurt, seltzer water and diet and regular soda to name a few.

Thank you 4th and 5th grades for your donations earlier this year. There were gobbled up almost immediately!

March will be 2nd grade. April will be 1st grade and May will be Kindergarten.

Mary Woodward has 11 teams participating in Oregon Battle of the Books this year! Students in grades 3-5 have been reading from a list of books, memorizing author names, and practicing trivia questions for months. Teams will begin battling each other in February until there is only one team left standing who will be named our Mary Woodward OBOB winner.

Please contact obob@marywoodwardpso.com with questions.

The PSO was recently able to secure a parking space to honor our wonderful volunteers. You might have seen the sign already. We would plan to award the space to a different volunteer each month after a simple raffle. To get your name in the parking space raffle you can do any of the following:

• volunteer 1 hour in the month -- as recorded in HelpCounter
• attend a PSO meeting
• chair a committee

Completing any of these multiple times means more tickets in the raffle. So if you volunteer 5 hours in the month and chair 2 committees, you will get 7 tickets in the raffle.

The raffle will be drawn on the last day of the month and the winner will be notified immediately.

Please don't park in any of the reserved spaces unless it is yours. You'll have the opportunity to buy a parking space for next school year at our Auction in April!

Anytime that you log in as a volunteer at the laptop in the office, your volunteer time is automatically recorded to your HelpCounter profile. You only need to log out when you're done and the rest done for you.

However, there are times that you might be volunteering, but not logging in at the office, such as when you're working on a project at home. Or maybe you were already in the building and forgot to log in as a volunteer. We don't want your volunteer hours to be missed! So here is what you do:

• Log in at https://www.helpcounterweb.com/ci/volunteer
• (You may need to select Mary Woodward if you're registered at more than 1 school)
• Select Record Hours/Review Past Hours Volunteered
• Select Add New Hours
• Fill in the text boxes and select Record Changes

(If you attended a school meeting where a sign in sheet was provided, your volunteer hours will be logged on you behalf after the meeting.)

If you have any trouble with this process, please contact Stacey Beckman, Volunteer Coordinator at Volunteers@marywoodwardpso.com. You can also update your volunteer profile by logging in at the website above.

Mary Woodward is using Treering once again for our yearbooks. When you order your $25 yearbook, you have the opportunity to create 2 custom pages for free! Don't worry, if you purchase your yearbook now, you don't have to create or finalize your custom pages until May.

Another awesome thing about this platform is the ability to share pictures with the whole school! After you create an account, you can upload pictures to share with the yearbook team and the rest of the school, just be sure to set your pictures to public. The more photos you share the greater your chances of seeing your kiddo's cheery face all over this year's yearbook!

Upload your photos here!

Questions, see this post or email the yearbook at yearbook@marywoodwardpso.com

Some classes are choosing to have Valentine's Day parties. These events are typically organized and led by the Room Parents, but we want everyone to have some helpful information about reimbursement.

The PSO budgets to reimburse each class for party costs based on the number of students in the class. This year the budget was set at $4 a student. This amount covers the entire year. TTSD discourages food (and especially sweets) from being the main focus of class parties. Therefore, PSO does not reimburse for any sweets purchased. Reimbursement can be used towards games, prizes or healthy snacks.

You can have a lot of fun without sweet treats and I'm sure the kids will be getting plenty from other students!

If you have questions about whether something can be reimbursed, please check with the Room Parent Coordinator, Shawna Romanelli, at RoomParent@marywoodwardpso.com. All reimbursement requests must include receipts and a Check Request Form, which should be sent to the Room Parent Coordinator for review.

We just wanted to remind you about two of the easiest ways Mary Woodward PSO collects donations.

Bottle Drop: The PSO collects funds from Bottle Drop too. All you have to do is pick up a blue bag or two from the office, fill it with redeemable cans and bottles and return it to the Bottle Drop station at 14411 SW Pacific Hwy, Tigard. Every 10 cents counts!

Box Tops: Box Tops have gone completely digital. Instead of collecting those little rectangles, now you can submit copies of your receipt and any earnings are awarded to the PSO automatically. The easiest way to do this is to download the Box Top app and use your phone to photograph your receipts. To make it even easier, you can teach one of your helpful kiddos to do the photography. The app shows fun graphics that make you feel like you win with every submission.

Did you know you can connect to the Mary Woodward PSO on Instagram and Facebook? Get updates on events and PSO sponsored activities all in one place. Our instagram handle is @marywoodwardpso and on fb it’s @woodwardpso.

To make things even easier, the links are below!