West Island School Parent Teacher Association Limited

MINUTES of the Meeting of the Committee of West Island School Parent Teacher Association Limited, held on Monday 28th August 2017at West Island School, 250 Victoria Rd, Pokfulam.

PRESENT:

Tiffana Richards Chair

Karen CarmichaelVice Chair

David Bruce Hon. Treasurer

Mahesh VasnaniHon. Secretary

Karen Johnston Parent Member

Barbara Tavernard -Thompson Parent Member

Jaya PeesapatyParent Member

Aparna KandaParent Member

Andrew MoreParent Member

Eli PuttockNew Parent

Chris Sammons Principal

Paul MaddenTeacher Representative

Blake HardingTeacher Representative

Jen LaiPTA Office Representative

Melissa FitzgeraldPTA Office Representative

Michelle StokesSupport Staff Representative / Business Manager

Roshni Mulchandani Communications Officer

Aaron Khemylani Student Representative

Megan Wells Student Representative

1. APOLOGIES:

Wynnie Chan

Nisha Israni

QUORUM

Tiffana Richards was declared Chair for the meeting and noted that a quorum was present and declared the meeting duly convened.

2. MINUTES OF THE LAST MEETING ––Monday 15th May 2017 were approved.

3. WISLIFE MAGAZINE - MOVE FROM PAPER COMMUNICATIONS TO ELECTRONIC

COMMUNICATIONS

Roshni came to the meeting to present the possibility of moving the WISLIFE Magazine to an online platform. She raised the following points:

  • New age communication - All the other ESF schools have an online PTA newsletter
  • More environmentally friendly – reduce our paper and carbon footprint
  • Content should only be about PTA and PTA events
  • We can sell banner space to advertisers with a direct link to their website
  • Can provide more real time updates, where as with print, the information can be outdated

On the other side, the PTA raised the following points:

  • The PTA conducted a survey last year and 55% of the parents still prefer an actual magazine (121 replied)
  • We do have a commitment to current advertisers who have paid for the year. We would need to check with them to see if they are ok with an online platform.
  • With a hardcopy, more people in the family will read the magazine, parents can send to family members and many like to save the copies when their children are in the magazine.
  • We could use recycled paper and hand out to the students rather than mailing the magazine

Follow Up: Melissa to contact the advertisers and meet with Roshni to discuss transitioning to an online newsletter.

4.MATTERS ARISING

No news matters were raised, not already on the agenda.

5. ACCOUNTS REPORT

David Bruce provided his quarterly report of the budget, in which, it was identified the budget ran to schedule and outside of an anomaly which wasn’t in the budget, did better than expected. Revenues were up and expenses came in as were budgeted, in fact, a little lower. All in all, it was a good end of year result. Proceeds of kitchen sale…..

6. SCHOOL COUNCIL UPDATE

Cynthia Lam has stepped down and Tim Storey is the new Council Chair. Tess Lyons has agreed to stay on as Parent Representative and we are looking for one more parent to join.

7. PTA OFFICE

  • Sports Uniform update – We have outsourced our sports uniforms to Playerlayer, who is now in charge of supplying the uniforms directly to the students. The ordering and delivery process went off smoothly, however, the actual color of the fabrics of the sport teams was incorrect. Playerlayer will replace the stock at their cost.
  • Fundraising - We are pleased to announce we will have a new event, Comedy Night on November 30th. Take Out Comedy in Soho will provide five comedians and the cost is $1000. Jami Gong is the owner of the club and he is a Kennedy School parent. We have secured the auditorium and will have a curry buffet for the evening. Aparna has volunteered to help coordinate the event. The committee discussed the opportunity to possibly add the Art Auction to the evening.
  • The PTA has increased its yearly fees from $400 to $450 and it has been well received. We have currently collected 77% of the PTA fees and further efforts are being made to collect the rest.
  • There has been a 3% decrease in bus registration, largely due to the rezoning of ESF schools. This is in line with previous trends, where there has been a drop of 3-5% annually over the past 7 years.
  • There has been a substantial donation of stock by WH Smith, which we will use at the upcoming school fair.

8. ANY OTHER BUSINESS

  • Karen brought up the possibility of having sports activities in the evenings for the parents, such as pick up rugby or basketball. The PE Department will follow up on this.
  • Other events like Star Search, Art Auction and possibly an Amazing Race type (Dynasty color run) event was discussed but relevant department heads have yet to come to some satisfactory conclusion towards the various logistics involved.

9. DATES OF 2017 - 2018 PTA MEETINGS:

Please find the correct upcoming PTA meetings for the 2017-2018 calendar year:

13th October 2017 – 6pm

27th November 2017 – 7 pm (AGM Meeting)

22nd January 2018 – 6pm

10th March 2018 – 11am

28th May 2018 – 6pm

MEETING ENDED 7:00pm

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