Information regarding Livonia PTSA Council's 71st Annual Founders' Day Celebration was sent to all unit board members via Givebacks. All important information was included in the email. A Founders' Day FAQ was also sent. Please review it as it will answer all things related to the event. Lastly, links to the Google Forms for Staff, Student, and Parent Honorees were also included and are below as well. Remember, only middle schools and high schools have student honorees.

These forms MUST BE COMPLETED BY DECEMBER 20TH. THIS IS A FIRM DATE!!! THE FORMS WILL NOT BE ACCESSIBLE AFTER THE 20TH! IF YOUR HONOREE INFORMATION IS NOT RECEIVED VIA THE GOOGLE FORMS BY DECEMBER 20TH, ONLY YOUR HONOREES' NAMES WILL BE LISTED IN THE PROGRAM. THEY WILL STILL RECEIVE A CERTIFICATE.

If you have any questions, you can email me at andrea.malenfant@livoniaptsacouncil.org

Kindly,

Andrea Malenfant

2nd VP & Founders' Day Chair

As a friendly reminder, please remember to submit your Michigan PTA dues for all new PTA/PTSA members by the 28th of every month.

Kindly,

Nicole Dant

Treasurer and Membership Chair

Livonia PTSA Council

I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving! Please keep uploading your documents and emailing me. The holidays get crazy for everyone but there are many things we can do to earn PEP points throughout the year so keep me posted on what is going on at your school!

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

Livonia PTSA Council PEP chair

On May 23, 2025, the City of Livonia will celebrate its 75th Anniversary! Over the year, there will be events to help celebrate the city's birthday, include The Spree and a birthday party. To help celebrate, the City of Livonia has created a landing page to promote events being held by community groups such as PTA/PTSAs and other local non-profits. For instance, the Bentley High School historical marker ceremony hosted by the Livonia Historical Society was the first event to kick off the celebration. Council will be including the Chili Cook Off and Founders' Day Dinner to the list of events.

You may be asking "what is the purpose of this? Or what's in it for us?" It is to celebrate Livonia's birthday and to show support for the groups that help make Livonia what it is. If your event is a public event, you may get a better turnout from community members. If your event is seeking donations or sponsors, being included on the page might bring interested sponsors to you. It is a community building endeavor!!

There was a contest to create a Livonia 75 logo (pictured above). Feel free to save it and use the logo on any flyers for events your unit will be having in 2025. You can also register your event on the website below, it will be posted for the public to view.

The Livonia 75th committee is also looking for fun Livonia stores, memorabilia, or photos to share through out the year, so if you have any great PTA archive photos you can post those.

If you have questions please email them at livonia75@livonia.gov

Start uploading photos for the 2025 Founders' Day now! When uploading photos, please include your UNIT NAME and a SHORT DESCRIPTION for each photo - thank you!

We started the holiday season with Cookies & Canvas. We had 115 painters! We ended up adding more spots this year. For November, we painted fun turkeys taught by Ms. Honicker, Cleveland’s art teacher! Part of the proceeds went back into the art room.

We are thankful for our teachers and staff, so why not have a Charcuterie Day! We had so many amazing donations from our families of meat, cheese, crackers, fruits, vegetables, homemade bread and more!

Who doesn’t love bagels?! Even when you order and pass out over 232 of them to the classes! Not a crumb was left behind. This was our first order of the year and from the feedback we will be having plenty more!

On October 31, we held a Dance-a-thon that was DJ’d by Batman himself (our fantastic music teacher Mr. Skebo). This was a prize for our back to school fundraiser. Each grade level came to the gym to have a dance party that included the Chicken Dance, Cha Cha Slide and Monster Mash of course! Our students enjoyed a snack while dancing the afternoon away. It was a very successful fundraiser.

We also hosted our Fall Festival at Riley on November 15th which was free for our families. Students enjoyed a DJ, photo booths, games and bounce houses. It is always a fun event to get our families together outside of the school day and was well attended. We also had a MOD Pizza fundraiser on election day that raised $263.

Our upcoming events include dining for donations at Buddy’s Pizza on 12/10 and our holiday shop for our students the first week of December. We have begun working on our Youth Making a Difference projects and have quite a few students signed up for personal projects as well as a school wide initiative of blanket and card making which we are calling “Comfort for a Cause” during the school day. We are also proud of our monthly diversity board that our diversity and equality chair Colleen always puts together!

We are looking forward to welcoming the new year with a skating night at Riverside and movie night in January and our Honey Baked Ham and Merri-Craft Florist fundraisers to continue to support our staff and students. Go Cougars!

Holmes has been busy fund raising. So far we have completed a No Fuss Envelope Drive and we had a day where students could buy candy and/or use their a cell phones at lunch for a $2 donation to the PTSA.

November has been a fun month over at Kennedy Elementary.

Our 4th graders started off the month with a PTA sponsored field trip to the Matthaei Botanical Gardens. The day of the field trip was absolutely beautiful and our 4th graders, along with parent chaperones, enjoyed learning about various plants and climates and took a nature hike in the area.

This month, our PTA hosted a dine-out at our fan-favorite Qdoba. Families always enjoy taking a night off from making dinner and supporting Kennedy at the same time.

The much anticipated “Holiday Shop” also returned in November. Our PTA Board created a fun shopping environment and worked diligently with many parent volunteers to make sure the shop ran smoothly. Each student experienced joy while picking out gifts for their family members, and the whole experience was an overall success for all involved.

Our PTA gifts Kennedy spirit wear shirts to not only each student, but every staff member as well. The shirts arrived this month and everyone was excited to receive one. The colors are coordinated by grade level and provide everyone who wears one with school pride and belonging.

Kennedy’s Mileage Club temporarily came to a close in November and will resume in March.

There was a high turnout of students and collectively they ran over 700 miles during lunch recesses.

We are also happy to share Kennedy had many generous families who helped fill an entire box of costumes to donate toward next year’s Livonia PTSA Council Costume Closet. And our school had four entires submitted for the Reflections Contest: two visual arts, one dance and one literary.

Overall, the month of November over at Kennedy has been a success.

Roosevelt Elementary has been working hard in November. Everyone has been pitching in to help encourage our character trait of the month “responsibility.” We also enjoyed learning about how exciting the future will be, when all of our students showed off their “when I grow up” outfits. We must have an amazing staff, because there were many future teachers among our students. Our school was also able to shower our lunchroom staff and custodians with appreciation gifts thanks to donations collected by the Livonia PTSA Council. As always, our school encourages all our families to join our PTA, and this year we have record numbers!

Mark your calendars NOW for Founders’ Day, Officer’s Training, and the Audit Party!

2024

DECEMBER

12/12 – STEM Family Event | 6-7:30 p.m. | Churchill High School

2025

JANUARY

1/15 – LPTSA Council Meeting | 6-8 p.m. | Central Office

1/18 – Chili Cook-Off | 11 a.m.-2 p.m. | Franklin High School

Possible Reflections Ceremony

FEBRUARY

2/19 – Founders’ Day Celebration | 6 p.m. | St. Mary's Cultural & Banquet Center

Possible Reflections Ceremony

MARCH

3/19 – LPTSA Council Meeting with nominations | 6-8 p.m. | Central Office

3/19 – Transportation/Warehouse/Maintenance Prep following meeting

3/20 – Transportation/Warehouse/Maintenance Appreciation Event

APRIL

4/16 – LPTSA Council Meeting with elections | 6-8 p.m. | Central Office

4/23 – YMAD Event | 6-8 p.m. | Churchill High School

MAY

5/21 – Officer Training | TBD | TBD

JUNE

6/11 – LPTSA Council Meeting | 6-8 p.m. | Central Office

JULY

7/16 – Audit Party | 6-8 p.m. | Central Office

AUGUST

8/20 – LPTSA Council Meeting | 6-8 p.m. | Central Office

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