The committee was formed recently in response to a recommendation from our Santa Monica-Malibu Council of PTAs (SMMPTA) which also has its own committee. The person asked to Chair works full-time in DEI and is a Roosevelt parent. We invited all interested parents to join through the Teddy Times. Everyone is welcome to join the committee whether they have experience or not.  Please contact diversity@rooseveltpta.org

Given the feedback from the survey we will be focusing on an event to highlight the diversity of our families in the Fall and we will also be looking into parent education workshops around DEI.

The Roosevelt PTA is an organization of members, comprised of Parents, Guardians, Teachers, and Staff at Roosevelt Elementary School. As a group, we support students at our school through advocacy, volunteering, and fundraising. We also work to build community through our events and communication. We encourage parent involvement and strengthen the connection between families and the school. The Roosevelt PTA is open for everyone to join and become a member.

We have received this feedback before and have tried holding meetings in the evenings, however, the turnout was lower due to conflicts with after-school activities, family dinner, etc. After experimenting, we found that morning right after drop-off worked for most people. New this year, our meetings are also available on zoom, allowing PTA members to listen while commuting or at work. All events and volunteer opportunities discussed at meetings are also published in the Teddy Times each week with links detailed on our website (rooseveltpta.org), as well as the homework folder insert and room rep emails. We are currently thinking about how to provide a summary of the discussion at PTA meetings to be published after each meeting for everyone to review.

Starting back up our events after Covid was a challenge.  It was hard to find chairs for events that many families had never attended. We were determined to bring back our events. That took some extra effort from our experienced volunteers. Going into next year we have great momentum and are excited to have new volunteers signed up in leadership roles. We would love even more help and new volunteers for both Chair positions and volunteers. Please look out for sign-up requests in the Teddy Times for volunteer opportunities as well as PTA events. 

Due to the capacity limit of venues or available space, we sometimes have to put a cap on the number of people who can attend. We have to balance our costs and big venues can be really expensive. Luckily, we very rarely actually sell out.  The one exception this year was Family Dance. Since the last Family Dance was in 2019 we were really unsure what the interest would be like. So we held it at the same venue as before. Given the overwhelming response to this event, our committee chairs are already thinking about larger venues for next year. And again, if you have any ideas, please let us know.

When creating our calendar each year we are careful to schedule events at different times and on different days of the week to accommodate a wide variety of schedules.  We have a lot of events and even the most involved families don’t attend everything. We do strive to have events in the evenings and weekends such as Back to School night, Pier Pleasure, Family Dance, Movie Night, Science Fair as well as Casino night (adults). Since many of our students are quite young we need to start events early enough that everyone can be home for bedtime.  We also hold some events during the school day just for students to ensure that all students can participate like bookfair, author visits, lunchtime activities, and a reading lounge. We will continue to make efforts to make events as accessible as possible for everyone.

Many of our events are community events at no cost such as the Back to School Picnic, Jogathon, Science Fair, and Talent Show. Room Reps also organize informal playdates for each class.  Some of our events like Pier Pleasure, Camping on Campus or Yearbook have such a large cost that we need to divide up the cost between participants. We are pretty conservative when estimating ticket prices so sometimes we happily raise money for Roosevelt students in addition to hosting a great community-building event. A few of our events are focused on fundraising such as Readathon, Online Auction, and Casino Night. We understand there are concerns with the cost of events. There are scholarships available for students/families who need help attending events. We also provide scholarships for yearbooks and the bookfair. We partner with school staff to identify and provide scholarships so that student confidentiality is maintained. Based on your feedback we are considering sponsorship opportunities and other ways to make events more accessible to everyone.

We used to have an IEP committee that fell away during Covid. Ms. Holeva and Ms. Stern are working to create a parent committee for families with students with IEPs. More to come….

Parents who complete the Parent Volunteer training are taken through the Olweus anti-bullying program. If your child is being bullied, please report the incident(s) to their teacher. You can also contact Ms. Stern.

We have discussed bringing valet back at several of our meetings. Unfortunately, there are some big challenges. First, we would need a volunteer to organize and recruit volunteers each day. This was tricky before Covid and will likely be even harder now. Additionally, our PTA insurance has some restrictions; only adults can act as a valet and every volunteer would have to sign a waiver. These restrictions make it difficult to reinstate.

To make drop off and pick up easier we have the following tips. If you have to get out of the car with your child to drop off, don’t park in the loading zones as you may get a ticket – there is ample parking beyond Alta on both 9th and Lincoln, only a block or two away. Also please don’t double park at pick-up – it causes a build-up of traffic. Again there is plenty of parking beyond Alta.