Garnet Mesa Parent Teacher Organization Meeting Notes

First Meeting of the Year!

September 3, 2025

8:30-9:35am

Welcome

• Thanks everyone for being here! It’s great to see new and returning faces!

Financials

• Current balance: $11,358.05
• Current bank statement not available this early in month

Parent Teacher Conferences/Book Fair

• Conferences start at 1pm on Monday, September 22 
• PTO usually runs Book Fair during Conferences and Special Visitor Lunches
• Two evenings and two lunch times; evening conferences are usually done much earlier on 2nd evening 
• Book Fair volunteers needed, PTO President Jenna Valdez will send out SignUp Genius invite
• Note: after PTO meeting, information was shared that Scholastic is not offering GMES the same services as in years past, and there may not be a Fall Book Fair
• Dinner for Teachers During Conferences
• PTO and Walmart have provided sub sandwiches for one evening of conferences the past couple of years, will do again this year
• 50 teachers, no onions please!

Open Discussion

• PTO meetings will be moved to the 3rd Wednesday of the month for the November meeting. This will help accommodate schedules, as well as make bank statements available. 
• Meeting time will stay the same at 8:30am
• Discussion of role and responsibilities of PTO: PTO currently does Color Run, Book Fair, Teacher Appreciation, and donates money to each grade for field trips or other activities, as well as various fundraising activities. What else can we do?
• Ideas from other schools: Teacher shout-outs, community night fundraising at local restaurants, community open house at the school?
• Students have requested a dance for either 5th grade (maybe 4th as well). PTO can happily help with that.
• Parents want to volunteer/be involved in the school, is there any way a list of volunteer opportunities can be made available?
• Fundraising: no big goal for this year. Let’s raise money and see what kind of big project idea we can come up with for the next year or two
• Picnic tables (last year’s fundraising project) ordered for outdoor classroom
• A SPED sensory room is in the works, perhaps PTO funds can help with this

Mr. Renfrow’s Business

• School year is off to great start! There is over 1,000 years of combined education experience at GMES!
• CMAS data is great. Lots of improvement, but GMES will keep moving forward to increase scores even further.
• STEP process is changing, Step 4 will no longer be in office/at front of school
• “Partner classrooms” being utilized as a way to stop disruptions: if a student is acting out, they are sent on an “errand” to a partner classroom, where they get to sit and wait quietly for the teacher. This should be a way to stop disruptive behavior without punishing the student.
• Old, unused corridor on South side of building will be coming down this summer. Schoolboard has approved and budgeted the demolition. Cost is ~$550,000, including asbestos removal. This will open up and expand playground area. 
• New committee: Special Ops will be exploring ways to make the school prettier. Ideas include painting murals in the bathrooms, revamping the cafeteria, etc. Please let Ms. Urich know if you are interested in helping. Her email is Jennifer.urich@deltaschools.com
• GMES is working on charting a new path with Facebook posts/videos. Lincoln Elementary is using AI to help create social media posts (they’ve taken our idea of posting weekly videos and ran with it!).

Next meeting: Wednesday October 1 at 8:30 am

November meeting will be on November 19