Welcome to the hustle and bustle of December! December is an exciting time at Percy Priest Elementary. The Grinch has already been causing mischief around the school and the kids are eager to catch him. We are hoping to catch the Grinch and make his heart grow 3 sizes. Students and staff are invited to participate each day during next week’s Spirit Week in the ways outlined below, which we hope will help the Grinch grow his heart!

Please don’t forget that Friday, December 16th is Holiday Party Day and a half day. School will be dismissed at 11:30 am.

Upcoming School Events

• December 16- Half Day/Class Holiday Parties
• December 17-January 8th- Winter Break
• January 9th-Students/Teachers return to School

General Announcements & Community Events

The fourth-grade students from Amistad have been sharing heart healthy tips on announcements in conjunction with our American Heart Association Heart Heroes Fundraiser. The ultimate goal is to spread awareness to our students about living healthfully, but we are also trying to help the Grinch live heart healthy, literally and figuratively. Each day of Spirit Week will highlight one of the tips the program encourages for being heart healthy. Spirit Week will be next week (December 12-16). Do you think we can help the Grinch grow his heart? Find out from your student next week!

American Heart Association-Heart Heroes 

WOW! We cannot begin to thank you enough for your support of our students in the Heart Hero Challenge this year. We far surpassed our fundraising goal and are excited to announce that we had:

• 305 students register
• 144 students take the challenge to be kind
• 167 take the challenge to move more
• 205 families complete Hands-Only CPR training
• 106 students complete Finn’s Mission

Thank you for your support as we learned what it means to be HEART HEALTHY!

Students were challenged to earn the money to donate and we would love to know how your child did just that. Please reach out to Mrs. Tanner (amy.tanner@mnps.org) and let us know if your child sold lemonade or hot chocolate, helped out a neighbor, did chores, sold handmade items or any other creative way that they may have earned money for the American Heart Association. We are compiling a list and would love to feature them!

Thank you again PPE for being an amazing community of HEART HEROES!!!

Volunteers Needed for the Teachers & Staff Holiday Luncheon

Let’s give our beloved PPE faculty and staff a festive lunch to kick off the holidays! We are providing a festive holiday lunch to the PPE faculty and staff after early dismissal on Friday, December 16th and would appreciate help making it happen. You can drop off items with your child at school the morning of 12/16 or around 11:30am before the early dismissal. Sign up here.

Tutors Needed

At PPE, we have the wonderful opportunity to provide some small group tutoring for our students through the MNPS Accelerating Scholars program. We are looking for parent volunteers who can help out to lead those groups. The time commitment would be 30 minutes each Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. Plans and materials will be provided. Please e-mail Grace Akbari at grace.akbari@mnps.org if you’d be interested in helping with a group this spring!

Unicycle Donations:

Last school year, UniCycle distributed more than 22,000 items of school clothing at a cost of about 77 cents per item. With total program costs of only $17,000, they delivered those items and saved hundreds of hours of time for social workers, school counselors and other support staff who are able to meet student needs with one phone call to UniCycle.

The success of filling these gaps has inspired the launch of a new UniCycle Family Fund. The fund will provide HERO family outreach specialists, who work closely with families and students as they navigate homelessness, a budget of $500 per quarter of the school year to meet critical, immediate needs.

Unicycle’s goal is to raise $30,000 this year – $20,000 will sustain their work, and $10,000 will launch the UniCycle Family Fund. If you are interested in making Unicycle part of your year-end giving, donations can be made here or a check can be mailed to: UniCycle/6532 Radcliff Drive/Nashville,TN 37221. They welcome you to reach out with questions, ideas, and to make a date to come and visit their new hub at Buena Vista Elementary.

Save the Date – Spring Auction – March 4th

Save the date for this year’s spring auction, where we will head Back to the Neon 90’s at City Winery on Saturday, March 4th from 6:00-10:00pm! Interested in helping with the auction? Email Jenny Alfrey (jwalfrey@gmail.com) or Stacie Evans (stacie.knight@vumc.org).

Fundraisers

Papa John’s Dough for Dough: December 15

PPE friends and family, take the night off from cooking and feed the family while supporting the school. Use our unique code: PPES when ordering from Papa John’s and the PTO will receive 20% of all orders placed using that code. 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. Thank you so much for your support

Holiday Flower Bulb Sale – Dec. 15 deadline to order

Purchase beautiful Amaryllis and PaperWhites as holiday gifts or for yourself! These flower bulbs are all top quality, an excellent value, and are guaranteed to grow. 50% of all orders placed using our website will go back to the school. Visit our Personalized Website by December 15, 2022: http://PercyPriestElementary.fpfundraising.com

Minted – through May 23

Help us raise money by shopping Minted all year long! You’ll get 20% off beautiful Minted products (excluding fine art prints) and Minted will donate 15% of the proceeds from every order back to us. Use our code FUNDRAISEPERCYPRIEST at checkout. Thank you so much for your support!

Roar Store – New Merchandise

The Roar Store is restocked with new merchandise! Please visit the Roar Store to check out all the new items.  Order online now at the Roar Store

Volunteer Spotlight

Name: Claudia Levy

Children’s names and grades:  Audrey, 2nd grade at PPE; Evelyn, 5th grade and former PPE Tiger

Volunteer Role:  Chair, Percy’s Reading Party

Why Percy Priest:  The thing we love most about Percy Priest is the community!  The parents, teachers, administration, and staff are all incredibly inclusive and supportive.  This is our family’s sixth year at PPE, and every single year our school and PTO have found new ways to support our students, contribute to our school, and assist our community.  And also, where else can you find the principal of an elementary school dressed up as the Grinch to welcome students from the top of the school??

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! Menus can be viewed on the Meal View App or at https://schools.mealviewer.com/school/PercyPriestES

Join the PPE Green Team

Do you have a passion for environmental stewardship? Join PPE teacher, Mrs. Hartsock, and PPE parent, Denise Bahil, on the green team. No experience or expertise necessary. Please contact Denise at denise.bahil@gmail.com for more information or to sign up.

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

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

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