Livonia PTSA Council Courier

Howdy all,

We're looking forward to our annual officer training session! Join us on Monday, May 11th from 6-8 p.m. at Frost Middle School for informative group and breakout sessions, and get a jump start on the 2026-27 school year. PLEASE share this info with your officers for next school year!!! Please let me know if you have any questions!

Mandy Gerstenbrand, LPTSAC president

Can you believe it's already May?!?! What an exciting time of year! By now you have at least presented your slate, if not already voted in next year's PTA/PTSA board members. It's never too early to start thinking about next year and what it could bring. While everyone is getting ready for the end of the year celebrations, now is the time to start planting the seed in family, staff, and community members' minds on why it's so important to become a PTA/PTSA member. How can you gain even more members? Does anyone have any ideas for any incentives for next year? When and how will you start your membership drive? How will you acquire 100% staff membership? The possibilities are endless! Let's see how many more members you can gain next year compared to this year!

Kindly,

Nicole Dant, treasurer and membership chair

The year is wrapping up! Winners will be announced soon! If you feel I am missing something please just respond to the email you were sent. Thank you!

As always please make sure you cc me on any emails that could earn you points!!

Please feel free to reach out with any questions and I will do my best to answer them or find the answer. You can email me at pep@livoniaptsacouncil.org

The current standings are below. If you feel like some points haven’t been entered please reach out and we can get any mistakes or omissions corrected.

Keadin Parish

Council Vice President 1 and PEP chair

May is always a special time in our school community — a season of celebration, reflection, and appreciation. As we look ahead to the final weeks of the school year, we’re also excited to introduce our newly elected PTA Board for the upcoming year. We are fortunate to have many dedicated members returning, bringing their experience and passion to continue supporting our students, families, and staff. At the same time, we extend our heartfelt gratitude to our outgoing 2nd vice president, whose loyalty, dedication, and willingness to always be the first to offer a helping hand have made a lasting impact. With a true heart of gold, their kindness and commitment have touched so many and strengthened our PTA in countless ways.

This month also gives us an opportunity to recognize the outstanding efforts of our current PTA Board and volunteers. Their time, creativity, and dedication have made this year’s programs and events so meaningful and successful. From organizing enriching activities to supporting our teachers and staff, their contributions have truly strengthened our school community in countless ways.

As we wrap up the school year, we look forward to celebrating together through some of our favorite traditions, including Staff Appreciation Week and our Spring Fling event. These moments allow us to come together in gratitude and joy, honoring the hard work of our educators and creating lasting memories for our families. Thank you to everyone who has contributed to such a wonderful year — we couldn’t do it without you!

It’s been a busy few weeks for our PTA, and we’re so thankful for all the support from our school community.

We’ve had some great events lately. Literacy Night and the book fair were a lot of fun, and it was awesome seeing so many kids excited about reading. We also hosted a fundraiser at Bad Brad’s.

Our students have had some great experiences as well. Second graders visited a one-room schoolhouse, and fourth graders participated in an in-school field trip with DTE. We had some fun things thanks to our fundraising efforts. The Kona Ice truck visited on April 24, and the Michigan Science Center brought a planetarium experience to our school on April 30 and May 1.

We’re continuing to focus on building community, too. Our Parent Mixer on April 26 at Beverly Park was a great chance to connect with other families, learn more about the PTA, and see how to get involved. We were also at Kindergarten Parent Night on April 22 to welcome incoming families and help them get connected.

As we look ahead, we’re already getting ready for next school year. Our 2026–2027 membership drive is coming soon, and we’re encouraging families to sign up early so they can stay informed over the summer. We’re also starting to fill committee chair roles and would love more parents to join us, more help really does make everything easier.

One of our favorite events, the Ice Cream Social, is coming up on May 14. We also encourage families to support Dining for Donations at Dairy Queen after Mr. Skebo’s concert on May 6.

At our last meeting, we held elections for next year’s PTA board. We’re excited to have Stephanie Street as president, Sara Jones and Kate Sutton as vice presidents, Kari Burger as secretary, and Chelsea Yoder as treasurer.

This year has been flying! Seeing each student grow this year has been great so far! We really do have an amazing group of students at Cooper!

As always, we had a Dine and Donate this month! Nothing like not having to cook dinner for the night! We supported March's reading month with helping provide goodie bags for Battle of the books and helped pass out pizza for the students who participated in the event. It's great to see how many students were involved with reading.

We ended the month with the Youth Making a Difference Ceremony and our last skate night! For Youth Making a Difference, we had a school-wide participation! Each student and staff members wrote something kind on a heart that we used as leaves on two trees that we displayed in the hallway. We also had over ten trifold posters showcasing all the amazing things our students did to make a difference in the community!

April was a great month for Kennedy Elementary.

Our PTA started off the month with our final Riverside night of the school year. As always, attendance was great and the students and families alike had a blast.

Mileage club returned this month. Our PTA has many wonderful parent volunteers who help make this club happen and a success. They were excited to report Kennedy’s students ran 98 miles together with the return. Way to go, Stars!

Our PTA also offered a dine-out at Benny’s Pizza Pub in April. Who likes an excuse to not cook and loves pizza? Pretty much everyone! Our dine-outs continue to be appreciated and are always a success.

Last but not least, our PTA offered the first of its kind “Music Bingo” at Kennedy. It was well attended and everyone had so much fun! This is going to be a new tradition at Kennedy and many families are looking forward to participating again next year. We want to extend a BIG Thank you to the following local businesses that donated prizes:

️⭐Gymnastic Dreams

️⭐Coach's Corner

️⭐Phoenix Theatre - Laurel Park

️️⭐Zap Zone

️️⭐School of Rock - Farmington

The gift basket prizes were awesome and we couldn’t have done it without everyone who helped us out.

All in all, April at Kennedy was great!

If you are a PTA/PTSA officer or committee chair, please make sure to join our group for important information, discussions, and more! Be sure to answer the questions when you request to join. A lot of great information is shared on this closed group page. It's also a great way to network with other units, share ideas, and ask for help.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/541318689333449/

Michigan PTA Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/everychildonevoice

National PTA Website: https://www.pta.org/

National PTA Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/ParentTeacherAssociation

National PTA Blog: https://onevoice.pta.org/

The Livonia PTSA Council is a group of 22 local PTA/PTSA Units within the Livonia Public Schools District. The Council is organized under the authority of the Michigan PTA for the purpose of promoting conferences, communications, leadership development and coordination of the efforts of the local units.

Interested in joining Council? There are chair opportunities available! Contact President Mandy Gerstenbrand at president@livoniaptsacouncil.org

Email: newsletter@livoniaptsacouncil.org
Website: www.livoniaptsacouncil.org
Location: 15125 Farmington Road, Livonia, MI, USA
Facebook: facebook.com/LivoniaPTSACouncil
Twitter: @LivoniaPTSAC