September 8th,  2022 – PSFA Meeting Notes

Meeting Minutes

  1. Call to Order/Pledge of Allegiance & Welcome: Current PFSA officers in attendance:  Kristen Cichon (2023) Colleen Stemetzski (2025), Debbie Rau (2023), Janet Schneider(2025)  Mary Ann Doyle (2023), Janice Karp (2023).

  2. Principal Gleason’s Report: Mr. Gleason- Good evening everyone, thanks for coming out tonight. Show of hands if anyone had a nightmare with transportation. It will get better. Most students were on time today. We reviewed the student handbook- it certainly is a bit more serious so if you can go over it with your students. The freshman got a paper copy of the student handbook and the seniors, juniors and sophomores have access to it online whenever they need it. Tomorrow is the freshman trip to Thompson Park. Very happy about that. With the help of the PSFA we got the buses and the students off to their orientation day. I’m here to work with your kids, there are a lot of things that still need to be scheduled for this month. There is a lot of testing that is required to do within the first 6 weeks of school. We had a great start in the cafeteria, it is open and running- cash only so far. There will be a POS system in place in about 3 weeks- information about it will be sent out as it is available. Lunches are a seniors and juniors combination for the first ½ hour, sophomores and freshmen for the second ½ hour. Clubs and activities will be scheduled for whenever is convenient for the advisors.  If the club meeting  is scheduled the opposite time of when your student has lunch normally, your student may get lunch in the other time slot when needed. We are trying to keep all of the food in the cafeteria and specifically off of the rugs. It helps to keep the school cleaner. Back to school night is next Thursday. We will send something home so look in the book bag next Tuesday.  Keep an eye out for that next week. On B-T-S night, we will follow a Monday schedule and there will be 8 classes to meet with the teachers. Great start to the year, transportation is always an issue in the beginning but it will get ironed out. The fitness room will eventually be available at lunch time for students to use. I’ll be here every month and I’m happy to answer any of your questions, feel free to send an email with any questions.
  3. Student Government- Lucy Batista- President, Charlie Raynor-Vice President. Marina Berger reporting today. Welcome everyone to a new school year. Yesterday was the first day of school and a huge success thanks to all of the teachers, staff and SGA advisors for this year- Mrs. Sam and Mrs. Wheeler. We had Italian Ices on our first day, which was a big hit as usual. We had an end of day assembly where Mr. Gleason said a few words and Lucy had her first speech as president and hopefully inspired students to be enthusiastic about being back to school. Tomorrow we have a really fun day planned for the freshmen at Thompson Park where the SGA and Sophomore, Junior and Senior class presidents will be facilitating fun games and ice-breakers to help the freshmen class get to know each other.  We are expecting good weather and a fun day. If you have any questions you can reach out to the SGA or myself. Thank you.
  4. Co-President’s Report: Kristen Cichon (2023), Colleen Stametzki (2025). Kristen leading:  I want to introduce everyone on the board: My name is Kristen Cichon and I have a senior graduating this year- which is why I am the senior co-president. The other co-president is Colleen Stemetzki. Next is Debbie Rau (2023), fundraising vice-president; Janice Karp (2023) recording secretary; Janet Schneider (2025) corresponding secretary; Maryann Doyle (2023)(2025) treasurer. In addition to that we have many committees and I would like them to give a brief update as to what they do. We will start with Hospitality and that is Lisa Lipincott and Kathy Seemto. We do anything that has to do with food and we would love to have people help out by signing up on sign up genius. You can help by sending in paper goods, snacks and food for all different events- such as the Meet and Greet at Allaire Park tomorrow night. We help with bagel breakfasts, and many social events at the school. Lina Esposito runs Spirit Wear- we have an on-line store where you can buy CHS merchandise. You can purchase on-line and it will be delivered to your student at school. I am a senior mom so I will need a volunteer to help out and take over at the end of year. Teresita Weiss and Krista Kingsly are the membership committee. We give support to the PSFA by bringing members aboard. We print out a student directory which is really helpful.  At the end of the year we sponsor ten-$500.00 dollar senior scholarships which any member may apply for Megan O’Brien will be chairing Color Wars which is one of our biggest events. The students are teamed up with all grades mixed.  There are outdoor and indoor games. Techie games, drawing competitions, and sports as well as an amazing barbeque picnic. It is a lot of fun. The teachers are all involved. The teams have their colors and their mascots, they make up a chant/song and have fun competing against one another. We have brought back the book club- Pattie Riddle is chairing and it will be super casual. We will get to know each other and meet at a coffee shop and possibly discuss a book. Debbie Rau runs the Gift Auction which is the biggest fundraiser of the year if you want to save the date–it is March 11, 2023 at Jumping Brook Country Club where we have had it for the past several years. It is a fun night out and you can bring friends and/or family. There are lots of tables and fun events for the night. We need a gift wrapping chair- the time frame is February. We need on-line solicitors- this is  where we have lists of previous donors and you can reach out on your own time, usually done October through December. We are looking for a co-chair to work with me this year and take over for next year- volunteers needed! We will have a gift card tree at Back-to-school night and then bring the card back in to put into the various baskets. I can be reached at vpfundraising@psfa.org. We do have a general website that you can reach out to the PSFA www.chs-psfa.org. Everything that we do to raise money is all for the kids. It goes for competitions that they compete in, transportation to events, everything that you give and do goes back to the students.
  5.  Corresponding Secretary Janet Schneider (2025): As far as any questions that you’re unsure of who to ask-you may send them in to the www.chs-pfsa.org email and we will find out who you should contact and let you know, or get you the answer ourselves. Feel free to reach out with any questions.  The “Remind” is a messaging system that is a text message you can sign up for by grade (there are codes for each class-freshman, sophomores, juniors and seniors). Whenever we have information to get out we will send an announcement that generally has a link to more information. Sign up for Remind text alerts and receive school/class info by texting the code(s) to 81010. For class of 2026- text @6g26pc; For class of 2025- text @5g25pc; For class of 2024- text @4g24pc; For class of 2023- text @3g23pc. You can also download the app.
  6. Committee Reports:
    1. Fundraising
      1. Gift Auction – Debbie Rau(2023) –  see info above in Co-presidents Report.
      2. Merchandise – Lina Esposito(2023) – We did great at freshman orientation, I need to reorder a bunch of items and do inventory. If anyone has suggestions/ideas of merchandise your students would like to have -please reach out to me. We sold out of pajama pants and some sweatshirts. Request for bucket hats, in a smaller quantity and bigger sizes.
      3. Membership – Teresita Weiss(2023) Krista Kingsly (2025) – see info above in Co-presidents Report.
    2. Public Relations- CHS Facebook page and Instagram – We are looking for someone to chair PR and publish any news that is noteworthy- please submit your name to  www.chs-pfsa.org .  Please submit events and activities that your students are involved in and we will post to celebrate events in your student’s life, send to  www.chs-pfsa.org .
    3. Enrichment Education:
      1. Driver’s Education – Janice Karp(2023) – We will be running an 8 hour course this fall. The course will be starting on September 13th, it will run virtually and will prepare the student for their written test which they need to take in order to get a permit to drive. The information is posted on the CHS website under the PSFA tab and you can sign up there as well as get additional information regarding the course. ii.We have the SAT/ACT prep course geared toward the juniors- please email us at the general email if you are interested. The course will help your student to prepare for either or both tests and is run by Solutions Prep for a fee. iii. We have a Meet and Greet Social tomorrow evening from 5pm through 7:30 at Allaire Park. We have 75 plus families coming so it will be a great way to meet other students and parents. There will be an ice cream truck and refreshments available as well as games in the beautiful setting of Allaire Park. You can also come and pay there if you have signed up online.
      2. Parent Chat- Marlena Loushine (2024) – The next two parent chats are scheduled for 6pm, prior to the PSFA meeting. The October Chat will be the NHS, NHTA and the NAHS and they will each tell us about their programs, how it works and how to apply. For November it will be the Counselor from the Monmouth County School district to talk about recognizing stress and anxiety in teenagers. We do these chats before every meeting and try to find topics that appeal to parents of HS students. Definitely open to ideas if you have any that you would like to hear about or talk about please reach out to me at the general email.
      3. Hospitality-Lisa Lippincott(2025) Kathy Seeto(2025)- We do anything that has to do with food and we would love to have people help out by signing up on sign up genius. You can help by sending in paper goods, snacks and food for all different events- such as the Meet and Greet at Allaire Park tomorrow night. We help with bagel breakfasts, and many social events at the school.
  7.  Treasurer’s Report: MaryAnn Doyle(2023):The P&L will be available at the next meeting. We do have some income coming in as people are signing up for the Meet and Greet Social tomorrow night. We have had some additions to membership which pays for the scholarships at the end of the school year. We also do Amazon smile so if you choose us as your charity we will raise money that way.
  8. New Business: Sarah Rau and Charlie Raynor are the NHS Committee heads for this year. Tim Willburn is the new NHS president and Sarah Rau presenting: This year we are participating in the Making Strides Breast Cancer Walk on October 16th. We did make up some t-shirts and hoodies for anyone interested in purchasing them. Order forms are due on September 23rd. We hope you will be participating in the walk. We will have a pink out the week before to honor survivors and families who are dealing with breast cancer.  We will be making a donation with the proceeds.  Also on December 17th we will be helping at Fairview Cemetery in Middletown to honor veterans as part of Wreaths Across America. This event is schoolwide and we would also very much appreciate donations so we can reach our goal of 100 wreaths. For every two we purchase a third will be donated. A small ceremony will be held prior to the laying of the wreaths and we hope that we will get as many families involved as possible.
Motion to adjourn: Colleen Stemetzki, Janet Schneider 2nd.
Next PSFA Meeting is October 13th, 2022
Hope to see you there!