The Miner Elementary PTO just completed its Move!Play!Grow! (MPG!) fundraising campaign and would like to thank the many generous supporters from the Capitol Hill business community. This was the first time Miner's PTO reached out to the business community for support and the response was incredible!!
Our Principal's List sponsors include the Chris Hardgrave Group; Tom Faison Real Estate in DC; Fulcrum Properties Group; Trent & Co, LLC; and John Smith & Peter Grimm of the SMITH TEAM Realtors. Sponsorship dollars are already hard at work by supporting our garden program partnership with Cultivate the City; Miner students are able to experience the organization's mission of educating, cultivating and nourishing their bodies and souls in our amazing garden. Thanks to the Scholar sponsors, including Allied Title & Escrow; City Chic Real Estate; The Rob & Brent Group; Phil Guire & Jeanne Harrison; Peter Principe - DC Properties Group; and Congressional Capital LLC, the PTO was able to team up with the school to provide a spectacularly fun Oktoberfest for Miner students, complete with a phenomenal petting zoo and brand new moon bounce! The Move!Play!Grow! campaign set a high bar to make real, positive and lasting impacts on Miner students' lives both in and out of school, but none of it would be possible without the generous support of these amazing sponsors! On behalf of the PTO and all Miner families, THANK YOU!! We will continue to lavish our thanks and praise on these sponsors throughout the year as the PTO embarks on new and exciting efforts to support the students. Please be sure to visit our Sponsor page and thank these businesses for their support of Miner! On Monday, November 13, Miner and the Miner PTO will kick off our annual Thanksgiving Food Drive! We will be collecting donations of non-perishable food items, such as side dishes associated with Thanksgiving dinner, for families in need. Canned and dry goods can be left in the donation box in the lobby of the school November 13-20.
Thank you for your support! Even though our student scholars had a day off school yesterday, Miner's teachers and staff were still hard at work with Parent-Teacher conferences all day. The PTO had the great honor of hosting an appreciation lunch for staff to show to everyone who works at Miner just how grateful the parent community is for everything they do for our children, day in and day out.
Teachers and staff really seemed to enjoy the delicious lunch items provided by the parents--there were no end to the smiles and "thank you's" for the parents. Lunch was planned and coordinated by the co-chairs of the PTO's Appreciation & Recognition Committee, Justin and Jessica Burniske. Thank you Justin and Jessica for all your hard work which resulted in such a successful lunch! Current and past Miner parents who contributed food or volunteered time to set up, greet staff, and clean up afterwards include, Beth Craft, Mariana Jones, Katy Thomas, Julie Muir, Jessica Huber, Teri Rupar, William Kapner, Tiffany Stewart, Shauna Eisenberg, Kathleen Anderson, Sarah Bell, Mariah Johnson, and David and Amy Treat. Thank you all so much for providing food, time, or both—and helping to bring a few more smiles and enjoyment to our incredible staff! Wow, what a fun day our Mighty Miner Bears had on Tuesday, October 31 - Halloween! The day kicked off with "Book-O-Ween" for the ECE classes, where students dressed as their favorite literary characters and then were able to paint their own pumpkins! The entire school then participated in a costume parade around the block, showing off their awesome costumes and Miner Bear pride to our neighbors. The day's festivities ended with our annual tradition: Oktoberfest! All Miner students were able to enjoy a petting zoo, bounce house, face painting, hay jump, pumpkin roll, and other fun games and activities.
The day was made possible by the amazing teamwork between the school administration and staff, Parent Teacher Organization, and PreK Parent Committee. Special shout outs and appreciation go to Miner's Director of Strategy & Logistics Dr. King, PTO Vice President Julie Muir, Family Services Coordinator Dante Daniel, and PreK Parent Committee Chair Matt Renaud for coordinating the day's various efforts. But of course none of this would have been possible without the help of a small army of parents, teachers, and staff who volunteered to set up, oversee the various activities all day long, and then clean up afterwards. We are so grateful for this incredible family we have at Miner, and we appreciate all the hard work everyone put in to make the whole day so much fun for all of our Mighty Miner Bear scholars! The Miner PTO wishes to express its appreciation to Principal Jackson, Director of Strategy & Logistics Dr. King, and PTO Vice President Julie Muir for representing Miner at last Sunday's School Information Fair at Capitol Hill Day School, sponsored by Mothers on the Hill (MOTH). This annual event is our first chance to engage with prospective parents and to tell them the good news about Miner and the progress that we're making! We hope that many of these families will end up joining our Miner family for School Year 18-19.
The Miner PTO wishes to express our gratitude to our partner Playworks and their incredible crew of volunteers who came to Miner on Saturday, October 21, to spruce up our stairwells and help organize our Library and second-floor book room. It certainly means a lot to us at Miner to have such caring members of the community share their time and energy to help improve Miner for the benefit of our students, teachers, staff, and families! Thank you! We look forward to Playworks starting with us in December to establish a program designed to improve the health and well-being of our students by increasing opportunities for physical activity and safe, meaningful play. We are so excited that Playworks has partnered with Miner to provide this type of high quality, multi-faceted program!
Miner Elementary School is a proud recipient of a $1000 Parents for Healthy Kids grant made possible through Action for Healthy Kids® (AFHK) and funding from ALDI. The grant will help expand student access to physical activity and healthy foods in school, improve knowledge and behaviors around physical activity and healthy eating, and provide funding and support to parent groups as they work to engage parents and families in these efforts both at school and at home.
Miner will use its grant to fund:
Special thanks go out to Lindsey Jones-Renaud, Chair of the PTO's Fundraising & Grants Committee, for leading development of Miner's grant application! Miner is one of 150 schools receiving an ALDI-funded grant along with technical support to implement its grant utilizing AFHK’s Game On program in the 2017-2018 school year. For a complete list of schools funded by ALDI in the 2017-2018 school year, visit ActionforHealthyKids.org/ALDI. Parents are also encouraged to visit ParentsforHealthyKids.org, a new website designed to support parents in creating healthier schools and part of the Parents for Healthy Kids national initiative. About Action for Healthy Kids® Action for Healthy Kids® is a nationwide grassroots network supporting school-based healthy eating and physical activity improvements that increase academic success. With funding opportunities, expert technical assistance and our flagship program, Game On, we mobilize schools, administrators and parents to develop healthy school environments for children. To learn more about the ways our 90,000+ volunteer network is helping to make Every Kid Healthy™, visit us at ActionforHealthyKids.org, on Facebook (facebook.com/act4healthykids) and on Twitter (twitter.com/Act4HlthyKids). We couldn't have asked for a more perfect fall day to celebrate International Walk to School Day yesterday! The event organizers from the Capitol Hill Public School Parent Organization (CHPSPO, https://chpspo.org/) did an amazing job of planning, and it really showed with an all-star roster of VIP speakers and other special guests (including DC Water's Wendy the Water Drop, JO Wilson cheerleaders, and Eastern High Marching Band). The Miner delegation was out in full force, with an amazing complement of teachers, staff, parents, and students who assembled for the formal event in Lincoln Park, followed by a block-long "parade" up Tennessee Avenue to the school. Thank you to everyone who came out and really demonstrated to our Capitol Hill neighbors and city leaders that the Miner family is strong and proud! We'd also like to thank Mayor Bowser and Deputy Mayor for Education Niles for joining us on our walk to Miner and for the opportunity to tell them the good news about our school. We're so glad they were able come inside for a few minutes to say good morning to our students. Finally and most importantly, the PTO wishes to say a special "Thank You!" to Katy Thomas, the PTO's Civic Liaison, for coordinating Miner's participation in the event, and to our incredible art teacher, Ms. Davis, for creating the wonderful signs our delegation waved with pride. Some photos from the event are included below. The PTO will work with the Mayor's office to obtain the official photos from the event, so stay tuned! Top row:
The Miner PTO was pleased to announce last Friday, September 29, that Miner had been awarded a two-year, $35,000 grant from the Office of the State Superintendent of Education (OSSE) to continue building, strengthening, and growing our garden program (see announcement here: http://www.minerelementary.org/news--announcements/something-exciting-is-growing-at-miner-elementary).
However, this incredible opportunity for the future wouldn’t have been possible without a lot of hard work and dedication to develop, write, and submit the grant application to OSSE this past summer. So a huge THANK YOU goes out to Lindsey Jones-Renaud, the chair of the PTO's Fundraising & Grants Committee, and Victoria Mirowski of Cultivate the City, who lead the effort to develop the grant application on behalf of Miner. The school garden program they designed ensures that Miner will fulfill the grant requirements to broaden and integrate garden, nutrition, and STEM-related instruction throughout Miner. The Miner community greatly appreciates the work of Lindsey, Victoria, and all who helped bring this grant to Miner! Miner Elementary School, the Miner Parent Teacher Organization, and Miner's urban farming partner Cultivate the City are proud to announce that Miner has been awarded a two-year, $35,000 grant to build and grow its school garden program. The grant, from the Office of the State Superintendent of Education, is to support staff as they grow the number of students and teachers who use the garden to teach and to learn.
“The garden is already an amazing space, but this grant will push the opportunities to the next level for all of our scholars as we focus on educating the whole child,” said Principal Bruce Jackson. Cultivate the City, Miner and the PTO will work together to integrate experiential learning from the gardens into school programming and instruction, particularly around healthy eating and STEM lessons; expand the garden infrastructure; and help students and teachers use and apply urban farming in their educational and personal lives. "We're so excited to help take the Miner garden to the next level and getting more little hands in the dirt,” said Niraj Ray, the founder of Cultivate the City. Miner will have two grant-funded garden staff:
Miner administrators, the PTO and Cultivate the City kicked off grant implementation with OSSE on Thursday morning and are ready to get started as soon as the grant become active on October 1. “We've been a proud partner of Cultivate the City for the past two years as we've worked together to revitalize Miner’s incredible gardens,” said David Treat, president of the PTO. “We are grateful for their expertise in helping Miner take the next steps to transform our gardens into an instructional space, and we hope it becomes a source of pride for our students, teachers, families, and community.” The Miner PTO and Cultivate the City developed the grant application on behalf of Miner. Lindsey Jones-Renaud, the chair of the PTO's Fundraising & Grants Committee, and Victoria Mirowski of Cultivate the City, lead the effort to develop, write, and submit the grant application to OSSE. The school garden program they designed ensures that Miner will fulfill the grant requirements to broaden and integrate garden, nutrition, and STEM-related instruction throughout Miner. The Miner community greatly appreciates the work of Lindsey, Victoria, and all who helped bring this grant to Miner! |
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