PTO News OVERLOAD
Informational critical mass achieved.
There is no shortage of PTO stuff to cover as we find ourselves rather suddenly more than halfway through January of 2025 already. Let’s try to be brief. Here are the bullet points. Bullet points are brief!
PTO meeting this Tuesday, January 21 at 6:00 p.m. at Greenstone on 5th Community Center
January Sunshine Committee
4th Grade Sneaker Ball
Spring Little League registration is open!
Meeting this Tuesday!
The PTO is taking our show on the road for this month’s in-person meeting. As noted in ever so delightfully brief fashion in the bullet point above, we’ll be meeting on Tuesday evening, January 21 at 6:00 p.m. in the Greenstone on 5th Community Center. Dinner will be provided if you come hungry—lasagna and bread and salad from Mona Lisa, oh my!—and we’ll be chatting about what we know about updates to the elementary school rezoning project, discussing our upcoming Silent Auction and Bingo Night, some Sneaker Ball planning, and whatever else happens to be on your mind. Please come if you’re able!
If you can’t make it in person, we will do our best—should the internet cooperate—to make the meeting available to stream on Zoom, via the button below.
Sunshine, but Chili
This month the Sunshine Committee is planning to surprise (oops!) and delight the teachers and staff at Johnson with a delicious chili lunch on Wednesday, January 29. Just click the button below to sign up and help OG Sunshine Maven Jenn Maeng provide the maximum legally-permitted quantities of fine, slow-cooked meats and cheeses to the Johnson teacher’s lounges, along with whatever other chili accoutrements might be necessary for warm bowls of unparalleled rapturous enjoyment.
A Wild Sneaker Ball Approaches
I don’t know about you, but I can’t think of anything I’d rather do on a Friday evening on the first full day of my forty-third trip around the sun than hang out in an elementary school cafeteria with my daughter and all her classmates while they scream and dance and yell and jump. And good news! I will have precisely that opportunity on Friday, January 31!
Johnson’s second-ever Sneaker Ball is happening, and we could use the help of any fourth grade families who want to make it an awesome night for the kids. Just click the button below to sign, or send us a few bucks on Venmo with “Sneaker ball” and perhaps some sneaker or ball themed emojis in the subject line, and we’ll make sure the cash goes directly into making this a night to remember. It’s sort of a kick-off to the fourth graders’ last few months at Johnson—let’s make it a special night!
Little League sign-up is live!
This isn’t, strictly speaking, PTO business. This is, instead, Little League business. But since your humble PTO correspondent is also deeply involved in the Little League your kid is most likely zoned for, I’m taking the opportunity to invite your kid to play baseball this spring.
Monticello Little League plays its games and practices mostly at Quarry Park, with some of the action also taking place at Stone Robinson Elementary. If your kid attends Johnson Elementary, they are most likely zoned to play in Monticello Little League, rather than Central or McIntire. Below is a map to that effect, or you can go to the Little League website, plug in your address, and see where you should sign up.
Computer, ENHANCE!
Of course, I know some of the people who help run Central and McIntire Little Leagues, and they are fine and wonderful people similarly dedicated to helping kids have fun learning and playing the rather perfect game of baseball. But if you’re zoned for Monticello, please do consider signing up with us! I coach a handful of Johnson students—including my aforementioned Sneaker-Balling daughter—and I would love to see more Johnson kids participating in our league.
Registration for the season is very affordable, and we offer scholarships for anybody that is worried about the financial end, so don’t let that be even the slightest hurdle to signing up. We want EVERY KID who wants to play baseball to have that chance. I don’t want to oversell it, but in my years of coaching I have found that baseball offers a unique way for kids to grow into their best selves.
Baseball is a game of near constant failure. They will fail over and over again, even as you watch them improve at every aspect of the game. But through those failures they will learn how to be a great teammate, a gracious competitor in victory or defeat, and enjoy the pride and gratification of finally—after all that failure—finding those precious moments of rewarding success. At some point in every season, every kid I have ever coached has had that moment of pride, a moment at which you can watch it dawn on their faces that they have accomplished something hard, something they have been working toward that they have suddenly realized was worth it. Sometimes it comes in practice, sometimes in a game, but every kid—from the most dedicated and sports-oriented to the most likely to be kicking dandelions in the outfield—eventually has that moment, and it is a wonderful thing to see.
Little League is also a terrific way to get involved with your community, especially if you have a kid participating. We are an entirely volunteer-led and volunteer-run organization, so we’re always looking for folks to help with everything from field maintenance to running the concession stand to umpiring games. I am especially looking for umpires this season, so if you have a passing familiarity with the rules and want to help out, or know someone who does, please do reach out to me personally.
Most of all, Little League baseball is just fun. Boys and girls of all Johnson Elementary ages are eligible and welcome, with any and all levels of experience. It’s fun for the kids, it’s fun for the parents, and it’s fun for the volunteers who make it all happen. Please consider signing your kid up—neither you nor they will not regret it.
That’s all we’ve got for now, I think. Hope to see you on Tuesday evening!