Livonia PTSA Council Courier

After Halloween, there will be donation bins at the elementary schools to

collect gently used costumes for future Costume Closets.

We will be hosting our IEP Binder Organization event on Wednesday, October 15th! Please share on your social media pages. All information is listed in the graphic. Here is the link to RSVP.

https://forms.gle/9XusNnkzjfTZKSPQ9

ATTENTION REFLECTIONS CHAIRS: We are officially accepting Reflections entries!

This year we have separate entry forms for each school. You can find the links for all of them here: https://forms.gle/6txg8iRsGtBr2Ewm6

We can't wait to see your projects!

Our students are back into the swing of things, activities have started up, and this year is now in full swing! Have you had a membership drive yet? If so, let us know what you did and how you did it for the next newsletter. We'd love to know how it went for your PTA/PTSA.

Your membership numbers should already by growing. Remember to send your dues to the Michigan PTA by the 28th of every month for all new members for that month.

You should have had your first PTA/PTSA meeting of the year by now. Has your budget been approved? If so, don't forget to send in your Livonia PTSA Council annual dues and completed form. The address to send/deliver this to is on the form. Please DO NOT send this form and payment to Central Office. The form is below. Every name on the form will receive an email when the form AND funds have been received for your records.

Kindly,

Nicole Dant

Treasurer and Membership Chair

Please upload your documents as soon as you are able! We have quite a few things with an October 1st deadline - TODAY - so I hope you met those! Don’t forget to email me as well when you have completed some of the requirements.

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

Our PTA has been off to a strong start this year and we’re excited to share a few highlights! To help keep our members engaged and organized, we introduced event magnets that list all of our PTA activities for the year. These have been a huge success in building awareness and making it easy for families to stay connected with what’s happening at school.

We’ve also been busy with fundraising efforts that support our students and programs. Our annual Color Run brings the Buchanan community together for a fun and energetic day, and our many restaurant fundraisers — from Panda Express and MOD Pizza to Pita Way, Olga’s, and more — have offered families a chance to support the PTA while enjoying a meal out. We’re grateful for the enthusiasm of our school community and look forward to continuing this momentum throughout the year!

News from Cleveland:

Coolidge PTA has had a busy start to the school year. We started our membership drive for this year back in the spring during our kindergarten orientation and are currently at 165 members — 23 more than we had last year! Over the summer we were able to collect 44 spirit wear t-shirts and sweatshirts for our spirit wear swap. This is a great opportunity for families to donate any Coolidge spirit wear that they have outgrown. We displayed all items during open house night for families to browse and take what they could use to help reduce waste.

We helped our media center set up, run and pack up their fall Scholastic book fair. We set up a classroom wish list board for all teachers and are excited to announce that over 100 books were purchased by families for their child's classroom! The media center was able to raise almost $2,500 in cash funds which will be used toward purchasing new books and materials for the media center.

We partnered with Schwartz's Greenhouse for our fall mum flower fundraiser again this year. We had a goal of 650 plants and were able to sell 712 plants! With the help of many volunteers, we were able to get orders organized and ready for pick up.

Our first dining for donations fundraiser of the year was held at DQ Grill & Chill. It was a very successful night with many families taking a break from cooking dinner or treating themselves to an ice cream treat. This is one of our favorites as it is within walking/biking distance for many of our families.

In honor of Hispanic Heritage Month, our DEIB chair set up a bulletin board with quotes from notable people throughout history. Students will have the opportunity to stop by and read the board throughout the next month.

We ended the month with a family skate night at Riverside Arena. It was nice for Coolidge families to spend some time socializing outside of school. We are already in the process of planning a date for our next one!

Cooper had two open houses — one for each grade. We had a table set up for memberships and we were also selling yard signs for our FIRST ever Color Run!!! During the 6th grade open house, we also introduced ourselves and went over what we do and why we do it!

Who likes cooking dinner?? Not us when we can support the school! We have had two dine 'n' dashes so far and we have made over $500!!! The families have been loving it and we love the support of our local business! We have a goal to have two per month depending on the month.

Stay tune to next month! We have been working on some exciting things!!

Emerson PTSA was so excited to help with the 7th grade welcome event doing what we do best — grilling hotdogs and it was a success! The curriculum night was fun and the PTSA had a table set up with lots of sweets to make the parents feel welcome and enjoy your sweet treat at school.

We have also kicked of the concessions stand for all home volleyball games so come grab a snack!

The 2025/2026 school year at Frost Middle School is shaping up to be another exciting year for our new seventh graders and returning eight graders. Our Frost PTSA board has two returning members and two new members who are new to Frost, but not new to PTA board positions. We are looking forward to our strong partnership with Mrs. Wheeler, the principal and our new assistant principal, Mrs. Katz.

A group of artistic students, parents, and alumni chalked the walk to welcome all the students and staff back into the building. Our generous parents donated snacks for our annual Frost Free event. This event is a special activity for only our seventh graders to welcome them to Frost. Our PTSA board helped navigate feeding hungry students after school. The format for open house was slightly different this year. Our PTSA set up a table welcoming parents to the event, sharing some of the wonderful things the PTSA provides for our Frost students, and helping parents and students join using a scanable QR code.

Our PTSA meetings this year will be held on the third Tuesday of the month at 6:30 pm in the Frost Community room. We started the year with a bang. Our PTSA board provided a delicious potluck. Attendance was nearly at a record high with 16 members in person, including school administrators, teachers, parents, and students, and an additional five parents virtually.

Next up, we start prepping for our annual Frost Holiday Craft Fair which is our sole fundraiser for the year. Since many hands make light work, you might just see a request for help in the near future. Here is your virtual save the date card ... Saturday, November 8th at Frost.

September has been absolutely incredible at Grant Elementary! Our Gator community came

together in so many wonderful ways to kick off the 2025-2026 school year.

Open House Meets Welcome Back Party

Talk about perfect timing! We combined our Open House/Curriculum Night with our annual

Welcome Back Party, creating an epic evening of community celebration. With food trucks

serving up delicious treats, a DJ spinning all the favorites, and Mother Nature blessing us with

perfect weather, both teachers and students had an unforgettable night reconnecting after summer

break.

Rolling into Fun

The wheels were spinning at our first Skate Night of the year! Grant Gators laced up and rolled

around with friends in their favorite team/school gear. There's nothing quite like seeing our

students' smiles as they glide around the rink together.

World's Finest Chocolate Launch

Our biggest fundraiser of the year is officially underway! The World's Finest Chocolate Sales

kicked off with incredible energy, and our students are already excited about the possibilities this

fundraiser brings to our school.

Meet the 2025-2026 PTA Board

Last but certainly not least, we're thrilled to introduce the amazing volunteers who will be

leading our PTA this year! This dedicated group of parents and community members is already

planning another year packed with fun events, meaningful programs, and opportunities to

strengthen our Grant Gator family.

What a fantastic start to the school year! Go Gators!

Johnson started the year off still under construction! But that didn't stop us from providing a welcome back lunch for the staff on the first day of school! We are looking forward to October!

With back-to-school in full swing, September has flown by over at Kennedy Elementary.

Our first dine-out at Red Robin occurred last month and the dine-outs are always a big hit for staff, students and families alike. And who doesn’t like a juicy Red Robin burger to mark the end of a busy month?

Our first PTA meeting was a success! As promised, we held a drawing for new members and attendees of the meeting. One staff member and one proud parent were each the happy winners of a gift card.

The Kennedy PTA’s biggest event of September is always our much anticipated Color Run! This is the only fundraiser Kennedy holds for the school year and we are ecstatic to report we exceeded our $25,000 goal! Plus the Churchill Marching Band made an exciting appearance and performed during the Color Run kick-off. Way to go Stars!

Our PTA also is providing every student a Kennedy t-shirt for the year. The sizes are rolling in and each grade will sport a different color.

We look forward to a busy October with fun events such as our first Riverside night, pumpkin decorating contest, fall fest and more!

Randolph has had a great start to the year! We held our Fun Run on September 25th. We hit our goal of $24,000. The staff was amazing, surprising the students with inflatable costumes during the run. We provided a tunnel to run through, a bubble station and the Churchill marching band joined us. It was the perfect day!

Webster PTA launched our biggest fundraiser this month — Walk on the Wild Side! Donations directly support programs and events that enrich our students’ school experience all year long. We are just two weeks in and already at 78% of our goal. It is really awesome to see our Wildcat community rallying together and supporting our school through the PTA. We are looking forward to celebrating our students' fundraising efforts with a huge celebration parade walk and super-sized recess.

Webster PTA also ran our first spirit wear campaign of the year in September. We host these a few times a year, supported by a great partnership with Endless Creations by Courtney. Our students will be receiving their orders this week. Every Wednesday at Webster Elementary is a Wildcat Wednesday, where we encourage the students, staff and parents to wear their spirit wear!

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