Thank you so much to everyone who joined us for our final PTO meeting of the year on Tuesday, May 18th!  If you missed the meeting, you can review the minutes and slideshow at these links:

May 2021 PTO Meeting Minutes

May 2021 PTO Meeting Slideshow

We are still looking for new members of the PTO board for next year, especially co-presidents; without volunteers, it will be impossible to keep the PTO running, so this is a really urgent need.  There are other positions open as well, if you’re interested in getting involved in any way!  Please reach out to president@lepto.org to find out more or with any questions.

Please join us over Zoom for our last PTO meeting of the year this Tuesday, May 18th, at 6:30pm.  A Zoom link will be sent out via email on Monday or Tuesday, so please look for it in your inboxes (or email secretary@lepto.org if you don’t receive it!).

We will be talking about the transition to next year — we are short on volunteers to keep our PTO board going and have open roles across all positions!  If you have any interest in joining the board or finding out more about the various opportunities, we’d love for you to attend this meeting!

If you cannot join us but have a question or a suggestion for us, please email it to president@lepto.org.  We will post the minutes from the meeting in our next newsletter.

Thanks very much, and we hope to see you there!

Thank you to everyone who has donated so far!  We have set a fundraising goal of $1,000.  In order to reach that goal, we need to collect approximately 220 lawn-sized trash bags of clothing/textile donations (or a mix of 270 kitchen-sized bags and lawn-sized bags)!  Unfortunately, we have only collected about 60 bags so far.  We need another 160 – 210 bags of donations between now and May 29th in order to reach that goal!

Did you know that 26 billion pounds of clothing and textiles pile up in landfills each year?  95% of which could have been re-worn or repurposed?  Or that it takes 1,800 gallons of water to make just one new pair of jeans?

By hosting a FUNDrive®, we are not only helping to keep 700 million pounds of usable items out of landfills every year, but we are raising money for the Lincoln-Eliot PTO!  And because we don’t have to sell anything door to door, like wrapping paper or chocolate bars, our FUNDrive® earns our PTO money without adding waste to landfills in the future.  The wins just keep coming!

Savers West Roxbury will weigh the items we’ve collected on our drop-off date, pay our PTO by the pound of donations collected, and give others the chance to love your gently used stuff.

Ready to reduce, reuse, and raise money!

Details:

Savers FUNDrive® Clothing Drive

Dates:

Donation collection NOW thru May 29th (one week before the drop-off date at Savers – scheduled for Saturday, June 5th).

Approved Items for Donation:

• Gently used clothing and footwear of all sizes (babies thru adult), including socks, bathing suits, undershirts and bras. Doesn’t have to be seasonal; they are accepting winter clothes too!
• Jewelry & accessories (belts, purses, wallets, bags, fanny packs, ties, scarves, hats, gloves, etc)
• Bed and bath items: linens, curtains, pillows, towels, tablecloths, blankets, sheets

(Items should be laundered and ready to sell.)

Items NOT accepted:

• stuffed animals
• furniture
• appliances
• books, magazines or media (CDs, DVDs, etc)
• sports equipment

Please collect in lawn-sized or kitchen-sized trash bags and contact Ronda Morra at 781-589-7226 or rbmorra@gmail.com to schedule a pick-up or inquire about a porch drop-off at her home! Thank you!

Nominations are still open for the 2021 Newton SEPAC Special Educator Virtual Awards!

Please go to https://forms.gle/M9uHkvhHx1NvvnJ2A to submit your nominations by May 17, 2021.

Here’s how the 2021 “Virtual” Awards will work:

• Families will submit nominations using the Google Form
• Each nominee will receive the text of the nomination in an email
• The email to each nominee will also include messages of thanks from Mayor Fuller, the School Committee, Superintendent Fleishman, Assistant Superintendent for Student Services Beth Fitzmaurice, and the SEPAC Board
• Each nominee will receive a printed award that will be dropped off at their school or location in early June
• We will send each Principal a list of the nominees from their schools

For those new to Newton SEPAC, the annual Special Educator Awards are a way to honor NPS and OOD staff who have gone the extra mile to support our special education students.  Nominees span a wide range of staff, including teachers, aides, BTs, therapists, bus drivers, crossing guards, administrators, other support staff, etc.  All nominees receive an award.  The Awards are usually held in person but will be virtual in 2021 for the second year running.  (Fingers crossed for an in-person gathering in 2022!)

Feel free to pass on the nomination link to families who may not get this newsletter.

Please contact Brigitte LaMarche at brigilam@gmail.com with any questions, and submit your nominations soon!

The City of Newton is trying to learn as much as we can about Newton community members’ experiences of and visions for their village centers to inform zoning proposals!  Engagement will include a Vision Kit to explore your village center(s), an interactive survey, and Focus Groups for equitable participation.  Sign up for a Community Engagement Information Session on May 20^th, 6-7pm, here and fill out this Focus Group Interest Form if you identify as a renter, younger person (age 15-35), BIPOC (Black, Indigenous and People of Color), someone with a disability, LGBTQ+, of the creative community, and older adults (65+). Learn more at newtonma.gov/zoningredesign.

Lincoln-Eliot’s International Week is coming up May 17-20!  Since this is a virtual event and we can’t share food at school like we usually do on International Night, we invite everyone to enjoy the diversity of our neighborhood cuisines and support local restaurants with a special discount for Lincoln-Eliot families.  Please see this flyer for details!

Mark your calendars for our next PTO meeting on Tuesday, May 18th, at 6:30pm!  We’ll send out a Zoom link closer to the date, and we hope everyone can join us then.  Please reach out anytime with questions or things you want us to discuss by emailing president@lepto.org.

We are so thankful for our teachers and we hope you felt our love and gratitude during Teacher Appreciation Week!

Thank you also to all the parents who helped in many different ways to show our support.  Thanks to your contributions to the Annual Fund, we were able to distribute stipend checks and personalized pencils to our beloved teachers (teachers, there are extra pencils in the office for you to give to any aides or support staff in your classrooms!).  DLA staff, your pencils are at the school for you to retrieve at a later date.  We also had the Cookie Monstah truck come and arranged for ice cream sandwich coupons for our teachers and staff.

Our children and families also wrote messages outside the school with sidewalk chalk and contributed to a virtual message board to share their love for their teachers.  (You can view the Padlet here: https://padlet.com/nuneze2/ys532whq77r3f9en)

Thank you again, teachers — you have managed this challenging year with such patience, flexibility, kindness, and grace, and we all feel so lucky for everything that you do for our children!

As part of teacher appreciation week we have lined up the Cookie Monstah truck to come to Lincoln-Eliot this Friday, May 7 from 2:30-4pm!  The PTO will purchase cookies for all teachers able to attend and provide dessert certificates to those unable to come that day.

Because of COVID, this will be a pre-order event, so we must order cookies ahead of time and pick them up at the event.  We need a minimum of $400 in pre-orders, so if you are interested in participating please consider placing your order as soon as possible!

You can find the ordering menu here:  https://foodtruck.pub/order/menu.aspx?busid=3296

While this is not a L-E PTO fundraiser, we’re happy to support a local business while celebrating our teachers during Teacher Appreciation Week.  Thank you to our teachers for everything you do!

The Red Sox are proud to honor local educators with their Most Valuable Educator Program.

Students have the opportunity to nominate an educator (teacher, coach, guidance counselor etc.) for a chance to be recognized during a pregame ceremony before Saturday home games.  Each honoree will receive a pair of tickets and a personalized jersey.  The student submitting the nomination will also receive a pair of tickets.  (Parents and other school administrators can also submit nominations.)

Nominations can be submitted to communityrelations@redsox.com.  In 400 words or less students should describe why this educator deserves to be honored.  Submissions should also include contact information for the nominated educator.  Winners will be selected by the Community Relations Department.