Happy Veterans Day and a big thank you to the men and women who have served or are currently serving our country.  Your service does not go unnoticed and the Percy Priest community truly appreciates all of the sacrifices you have made.

It was an epic week at Percy Priest, with hundreds of visitors for our fabulous GrandFriends Days.  It took an army of volunteers to make this event the best yet.  Our special friends loved hearing the children singing in the cafeteria, visiting the classrooms and shopping at our Literari Book Fair.  Thank you to our amazing chairs, Rosemary Stunkel and Julia Saitta for a wonderful and well planned two days.  We are so thankful for all that you did to make our GrandFriends Day so special.

Another big shout out to our amazing music teacher, Samantha Marchetti for bringing a musical program back to our school.  Lastly, thank you to Vicki Markham, our GrandFriend Liaison, who has helped welcome our friends to Percy Priest and continues to work hard to grow our GrandFriend community.

Our next big event is Performing Arts Night on December 7th, so mark your calendars and be on the lookout for more information about this great event coming soon!

Let’s give a big shout out to our November Birthdays!  Be sure to wish them a happy birthday when you see them!

Important Dates

• November 13 – Storyteller Series- African Culture
• November 14-December 5– AHA Kids Heart Challenge
• November 15 – PPE Parenting Series
• November 17 – 2nd Grade Parent Party
• November 22-24 Thanksgiving Break-No School
• December 5– Navigator Day
• December 7– Performing Arts Night 5-7 pm
• December 20– School dismissed at 11:30 for Winter Break
• December 21-January 8- Winter Break
• January 9– Students return to school

Teacher of the Year-Ashley Strobel

Let’s give a big Percy Priest Tiger ROAR for our 2023-2024 Teacher of the Year, Ashley Strobel.  Her compassion and love to teach our kids is shown everyday.  We are so lucky to have her as a teacher and friend at our school.

• Blasting is now underway.  We will have two blasts a day (one during school hours between 11-12 and one after school hours between 3:30-4:30)  We are anticipating the blasting schedule to continue through the end of the calendar year (December).
• With the attention of the construction trailer and additional parking needed for members of the construction team, we have limited staff parking in the side lot on Priest Road.  This lot is closed to family parking in the mornings.  If you need to park in the morning, please plan to use one of the front parking lots.
• The MNPS facilities department will also be posting periodic updates at the link below

Percy Priest Elementary – Metro Nashville Public Schools Facilities (mnps.org)

Upcoming Events

Performing Arts Night-December 7th 5-7pm

Mark your calendars for an evening of all things art. We have added to our very popular Art Show to bring more music, dancing and art to Percy Priest Elementary.  Be on the lookout for ways to volunteer for this great event.

Kids Heart Challenge- November 14-December 5

We are proud to announce that our school will be participating in Kids Heart Challenge (KHC) this year from November 14th through December 5th!  When your student joins our school’s KHC team, they will learn how to keep their hearts and brains healthy, get moving with fun activities, meet kids with special hearts and raise funds for the health of all hearts. Plus, they’ll feel good for doing good!

Our goal is to have 100% of students register and learn hands-only CPR! Any student that watches the hands-only CPR video and completes the quiz, will earn a special edition KHC prize!

Start today to enjoy educational, fun online experiences and raise funds. Everything can be done easily online with our Kids Heart Challenge app or website. Send emails, texts and post social media messages to collect donations online. Tip: if you receive checks, use the app to scan them and have the amount immediately added to your child’s total.

Steps to Get Started:

Download the AHA Schools app or visit heart.org/Schools to register today.

Set a fundraising goal with your child and send emails to invite friends and family to support it.

Complete Finn’s Mission to know the lifesaving skill of Hands-Only CPR®.

We want to encourage our students to be passionate about the mission of the American Heart Association and brainstorm ways to gather donations. Please talk with your child about ideas on ways to gather donations in the community (some ideas include chores around the house, make bracelets/crafts to sell, lemonade stand, etc.)!

Let’s help our children be heart heroes!

PPE Parenting Series

Please mark your calendars for our kick-off PPE Parenting Series Event ! Join us virtually on Wednesday, November 15th from 7:30pm – 8:30pm to learn about “Bullying & Relational/Sibling Aggression” and how we as parents can help. Our discussion will be led by Charlotte Keeney, LCSW MSSW, of Symmetry Counseling.

Storyteller Series

Small Fundraisers

Holiday Greenery Sale–  Get ready for the upcoming holiday season by ordering your pre-decorated custom fraser fir wreath ($60) or classic fraser fir wreath ($27) today!  Orders can be placed through the PPE website at the links below.  Deadline to order is Friday, November 17th.  Pick-up date will be Wednesday, November 29th by the school.

https://www.percypriest.org/product/premium-24-fraser-fir-wreath/

https://www.percypriest.org/product/24-fraser-fir-wreath/

Charleston Wrapping Paper Sale

Flower Power

It’s time to order your holiday flower bulbs! We are partnering with Flower Power to sell beautiful amaryllis and paperwhites.  These flower bulbs are all top quality, an excellent value and guaranteed to grow. Visit our personalized website HERE to order by December 15th. 50% of all orders placed will go back to the PTO.

General Announcements

Clorox Wipes Needed

The Cafe is in need of some clorox wipes to wipe down tables and help keep it clean.  If you are interested in dropping some off to the front office, it would be most appreciated.

Order your Yearbook TODAY!

Unicycle Donations

It feels like Winter! When you dig out those winter coats, be sure to send any that no longer fit your student into school. We’ll fill our in-school closet to share with another student here, or send to our friends @unicycle.nashville to be shared with a @mnps_hero student, or to fill another school’s closet. We’ll take “outgrown, not worn out” coats of any size. Let’s share the warmth with our MNPS family!The donation basket is located on the PPE Front porch.

Counselors Corner:

Throughout October & November, the Counseling Department will be leading required safety training in your child’s classroom. The curriculum can be previewed here: Home – Fight Child Abuse

For additional resources, please reach out to our School Counselors: Kristin.Keiper@mnps.org or Diana.Baxter@mnps.org.

Artsonia:

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!

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.

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

Small Fundraisers Spotlight

1stDay School Supplies

If you ordered your child’s school supply boxes through our PTO fundraiser, it was not only super helpful to have all the supplies in the classroom at the start of school, BUT you also helped raise money for the PTO.  This year, this fundraiser tripled the amount given back to the school compared to the previous year.  Our goal is to organize fundraisers that provide a service, need or product that you will use while also giving back to the school.

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

Small Fundraisers Spotlight

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

Publix Partners will donate $250 to the Percy Priest Elementary PTO for every $37,500 spent cumulatively by our school’s participants. To support Percy Priest, join Club Publix. If you’re already a member, log in to your account and select My Publix Partner to search for the school of your choice. Remember to pay with the Publix app or enter your phone number at checkout each time you make an eligible purchase. Parents do have to re-register annually.

How to Stay Connected

Email Lists

New families – Be sure to sign up for our school newsletter, which includes grade-level information each week. Register today.

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%26tribe-bar-date%3D2022-08-31%26ical%3D1%26eventDisplay%3Dlist