The November ‘09 Parents Association newsletter is now available online.

- PA Newsletters Page

The November ’09 edition is packed full of news. In this issue find out how the PA are raising funds for the school library, Green Thumbs at Work and our new secretary and care-taker as well as plenty of more updates.

• Vinyl or carpet flooring – laying of it (probably starting sometime during the week of the 17th August)
• Truck or vans, and people to move all furniture, books ,etc from Soccer Club to new premises (probably Saturday 15th or Sunday 16th August)
• People to clean during/after laying of flooring
• Fire extinguishers and advice regarding fire safety requirements
• Person to source and install push-button security lock unit for front door
• Etc…

The Parent Association will meet on Thursday Feb. 18th, 8-9:30 pm, in the pre-fab. All parents are welcome to attend and we promise to start and end on time! Items on the agenda this month include extra-curricular activities for children, workshops for parents, a review of our bag-packing fundraiser and planning our next big event. Come along and see how we can work together for the best interests of our children.

CETNS parents will raise money while helping customers bag their shopping at Dunnes Stores in Carrigaline. The bag pack will run on Saturday & Sunday, 14th & 15th February from 12-6pm.

There will be two shifts each day, 12-3pm and 3-6pm. We need four or five parents for each shift so that we can cover all the tills so please plan to give a few hours of your time and help make our first PA fundraiser a success!

The CETNS Parent Association wants to know what you need from us. Members of the sub-committees are surveying you for your views on what kinds of extra-curricular activities you want for our children, what topics you would like informational workshops for parents to cover and how you would like to get information from the PA. Tell them what you want and make your voice count!

Wednesday evening’s Parent Association meeting was well-attended and very productive.  Eight parents and our principal, Mel, worked hard and got through a packed agenda, including setting up sub-committees to work on: Fundraising, Building our Parent Community, writing the Parent Association Constitution, organising Extra-Curricular Activities for our children and setting up Information Workshops for Parents.  We hope to have news of our next fundraiser and PA-sponsored event very soon.

We are still a very new school but we already have a fantastic level of parent participation. The CETNS Parent Association is committed to building a strong parent community with a culture of active involvement and inclusion. Every voice counts and every parent can make a difference. Why not come to our next meeting (Feb.19th) and see how you can be part of making our school the best it can be?

The next CETNS Parent Association meeting will be held on Tuesday, January 13th from 8-9:30pm in the Junior Infants classroom (downstairs). Our first project together, the End-of-Term party, was a great success, thanks to the involvement of all parents – well done to us! At the meeting we will set our goals for the rest of the school year, choose a fundraising project, discuss ways to build our school community and plan to write our PA constitution.  All parents are invited to come along to the meeting and participate. We need everyone’s ideas and enthusiasm to make our school the best it can be!  See you there!

On Friday the 12th of November and Saturday the 13th of November, a “Bag Pack” will take place in Dunnes Stores, Carrigaline.  The idea is to stand at the supermarket checkout and pack bags for the shoppers, who then throw cash into our large buckets. It’s a great way of helping out with fundraising for our school, so please come and lend a hand at one or more of the 3 sessions: Friday from 5 to 8 pm,  Saturday from 12 to 3 pm and 3 to 6 pm.