Don’t know about you, but it was oh so nice to be in the building for Open House last night! There was so much energy and excitement meeting teachers and parents, and we hope you got a lot out of the evening. Thank you for coming!

Our Friday eblast continues to have tons of information about upcoming events and ways to get involved. Please be sure to scroll down for information about our Fall Family Picnic, Tiger Cup Golf Tournament, Percy’s Vintage Closet and Songs Under the Stars – and so much more!

Upcoming Events

Upcoming Events

• September 6 – Picture Day
• September 9 – Fall Family Picnic
• September 12 – Tiger Cup Golf Tournament
• September 13 – Town Hall: PTO Strategic Planning and Priority Spending
• September 21 – Percy’s Vintage Closet
• October 4 – Town Hall: Helping Our Kids Cope with Big Emotions
• October 6 – Songwriters Night

Fall Family Picnic – September 9th

School is in full swing and it’s time to celebrate! Bring the whole family to the PPE Back to School Picnic on Friday, September 9 from 5:00-7:00 p.m. Grab dinner from one of our food vendors, Hattie B’s Hot Chicken, Jet’s Pizza, That’s My Dog, and Cajun Kids or dessert from Retro Snow, Layered Bake Shop, or The Friends Life Treat Truck. DJ Louie will spin all his hits while kids play on the playground, make crafts, put on temporary tattoos, or jump through the bouncy obstacle course.

All this fun can’t happen without you! Sign up to volunteer for the event HERE. Questions? Contact Patty Bea Presley (pattybeapresley@gmail.com), Erin Thomas (elpark2@gmail.com) or Amanda Woods (amandamoorewoods@gmail.com).

Tiger Cup Golf Tournament – September 12th – REGISTRATION NOW OPEN!

The Percy Priest PTO will kick off its first fundraising event of 2022-23 school year with our annual TIGER CUP golf tournament on Monday, September 12th.  Enjoy 18 holes of golf with PPE friends, family and/or neighbors at Old Natchez Golf Course in Franklin. Tee off will be at 9:30 am and will conclude mid afternoon. Back by popular demand is Mamas and Mimosas….a one-hour golf lesson followed by drinks, snacks, and conversation in a beautiful setting.

Register here!

We need sponsors!  Are you interested in promoting your business at this event and possibly others throughout the school year?  We can help you customize your sponsorship in a lump sum for multiple events and/or throughout the year. Details about sponsorship for Tiger Cup can be found here. Reach out to Kass Benchoff kassbenchoff@yahoo.com with any inquiries about multiple events.

Town Halls – September 13th and October 4th

Join PTO leadership on two dates this fall to talk about important topics and provide your feedback! Dates are:

September 13 – Come learn about the money it takes to keep our school running and provide feedback on how the PTO should allocate any excess funds we may have after we meet our budget for the year!

October 4 – A.K. Tanner, our Advocacy Center Coach, will lead a conversation about helping our kids cope with big emotions. She will talk about the Advocacy Center and her role as Advocacy Coach in supporting students as they gain control of their own feelings and emotions, to create a more successful education experience.

Percy’s Vintage Closet – September 21st – deadline for donations is September 14th

One Tiger’s outgrown shirt is another little Tiger’s treasure! We are collecting pre-loved PPE logo clothing for our inaugural Percy’s Vintage Closet sale now through September 14! Please drop off any PPE clothes you’d like to donate in the bin on the school front porch. This fun sale will be a great opportunity to stock up on some heavily discounted PPE clothing with all proceeds going back to our school! Be on the lookout for more information in your child’s Friday folder in the coming weeks!

Songs Under the Stars – Save the Date – October 6th

Saddle Up for a Night of Hot Chicken & Country Music! Join us for an intimate gathering under the stars with Grammy award winning artists Josh Osborne, JT Harding and our very own PPE parent, Ross Copperman! Enjoy beer, wine, & comfort food from local breweries, restaurants, & artisans. Bring your own chair and we’ll bring the fun! Tickets will be on sale next week and are limited, so stay tuned (pun intended)!

A huge THANK YOU to Osborne State Farm for sponsoring all of our Back to School activities. Sponsorships help us underwrite the costs associated with things like kindergarten totes, new family yard signs, the popsicle party and the Family Picnic, and we are so grateful for the support of Osborne State Farm!

If you or your company would be interested in sponsoring the PTO event or fundraiser, please contact Margaret Crane (magsuga@yahoo.com).

General Announcements

First Day Forms – due September 9th

At the beginning of each school year, we send home several documents that MNPS requires parents and caregivers to review, sign and return. These forms have been sent home and need to be returned to homeroom teachers by September 9.

Parents must also complete certain required MNPS forms online through the MNPS “Permissions Portal”. To do so, visit the MNPS Student-Parent Handbook page. Scroll halfway down the page and you will see the “Permission Forms” section and a blue button to the right that says “Permissions Portal”. Click there to begin.

Grandparents and Special Friends Email List

We know there are many grandparents, family and special friends of PPE students who would like to be involved. You can keep up with the latest news by signing up for the PPE Grandparents, Family & Friends List here.

And, go ahead and save the date for this year’s Grandparents & Special Friends Days on November 3 and 4!

Workroom Volunteers Needed

Calling a few good grown-ups to help print and flyers for Friday folders! The front office could use help on Thursday mornings throughout the year and would love to have a dedicated, small team who does this all year long. If you’re interested in volunteering, please sign up here.

Unicycle Donations

Families, we’re a UniCycle School! That means you can donate your students’ outgrown school clothing items in the collection basket on the PPE front porch, and we’ll fill our UniCycle Closet so that it’s ready to be used by any student here who’s had a summer growth spurt or could use an extra shirt or two. If we collect more than we need, we send it to @Unicycle.nashville and they get it to another school closet or direct to a student experiencing homelessness in the @mnps_hero program. Keep your closets cleaned out and we’ll make sure your items go on to live its next best life – it’s a win-win for all!

Calling All New Percy Priest Tigers!

Please let us know if you are new to Percy Priest and are interested in having a returning family serve as a “buddy” to help you get acclimated at the school by filling out our Buddy Request Form. Buddies serve as friendly faces, resources for questions you may have, and connectors as you begin at our school. Tell us about yourself and we’ll match you with someone who would love to know you!

Come Have Lunch!

Parents, grandparents and special friends are welcome to eat lunch with students! To help us with space and accommodating guests, we ask that visitors sign-up to come eat lunch using the bookings link below. Please be sure to select the correct grade level and teacher. When signing-up, we also ask that you only sign-up for one day at this time. Thank you for your help and we hope to see you for lunch soon. Sign up to come eat lunch with your student!

Dad Bod Run Club

When: Saturdays +/-6:45am
Who: All ability levels are welcome! In the past, we’ve even been accompanied by strollers, pets, and brothers-in-law, too. Sometimes (not always) Clay brings coffee for post-run recovery.
Routes: We run in one or two groups along the following routes:
+/- 3 miles to Radnor and back to PPE
+/- 5 miles through Radnor and back to PPE
Interested? Join us for Happy Hour Aug. 25 at 5pm at 1200 Vintage Pl.
Download GroupMe App & join: PPE Dad Bod Run Club
Questions: Lewis Agnew at Lewis.agnew@gmail.com or 615-712-4318

How to Volunteer

We need your help to make next year the best year yet at Percy Priest! Dedicated and engaged parents are a key ingredient to making our school the great school that it is. There are big and small volunteer opportunities throughout the year. Please check out our volunteer form and let us know what things interest you. We’ll be in touch with more information.

We particularly need returning parents who are willing to be “buddies” for new Percy Priest families, simply serving as a friendly face and a point of contact.

If you have questions of any kind, please contact us at presidentsppe@gmail.com. Thank you!

Small Fundraisers Spotlight

For a list of all of our ongoing small fundraisers, please visit our Small Fundraisers webpage.

Amazon will donate 0.5% of all money spent on their site. Link your Amazon account to the Percy Priest Elementary PTO by clicking on this link and then connecting Percy Priest to your account. For future Amazon shopping, you must use the site smile.amazon.com in order to give Percy Priest the 0.5%.

The funds raised from this event will be used to support the PTO budget which provides our school with additional staff, software and supplies to our school.

How to Stay Connected

Add PPE happenings to your calendar automatically!

You can subscribe to our PTO calendar and have all of our events show up on your calendar, so you never lose track of important dates! Following the links below will prompt you to subscribe to the calendar via your preferred calendar app. Any time the PTO updates an event through the website, it will update on the calendar of all subscribers (how often your calendar pulls updated info will be based on your individual personal settings – every 5 minutes, 1 hour, 1 week, etc).

For Calendar Apps (apple calendar etc), go to: webcal://www.percypriest.org/?post_type=tribe_events&ical=1&eventDisplay=list

For Google Calendar, go to: https://www.google.com/calendar/render?cid=webcal%3A%2F%2Fwww.percypriest.org%2F%3Fpost_type%3Dtribe_events%26ical%3D1