May you have all the happiness and luck that life can hold and at the end of your rainbows may you find a pot of gold.  We are a LUCKY bunch to be a part of the Percy Priest Community.  We hope everyone is having a fun Spring Break whether you traveled to a fun destination or stayed local and took advantage of our fun city.

We will return on Monday and dive right into Math Madness.  It will be a week that will add up to lots of fun.  Don’t forget about our Parent’s meeting on Tuesday to preview our new building plans.

Upcoming School Events

• March 13-17 – Spring Break – No School
• March 21 – New Building Preview
• March 23 – Math Night
• March 29 – Mr. Lincoln visits PPE
• April 6 & 7 – Spring Holiday- No School
• April 20 – Author Visit (2nd, 3rd & 4th)
• April 21 – Tiger Tennis Social
• May 1-5 – Teacher Appreciation Week
• May 1 – NPL Puppet Truck- Puss in Boots (2nd & 3rd)
• May 2 – NPL Puppet Truck – Tomas (K & 1st)
• May 5 – Cinco de Mayo & Field Day (*May 9 Rain Date*)
• May 7 – Incoming Kindergartener Popsicle Party
• May 12 – Spring Picnic
• May 19 – Spring Sing

Spring Field Trips

• April 12 – 1st Grade (Acker / Wall) @ Warner Park
• April 14 – 1st Grade (Brumleve / Faison / Hartsock) @ Warner Park
• April 26 – Kindergarten @ Zoo
• May 11 – 2nd Grade @ Nashville Children’s Theater

School Events

New Building Preview – March 21

Mark your calendar for Tuesday, March 21 at 6:00 and come join us in the Library to see the plans for our new school! The building & construction team from MNPS is coming to show us what it will look like and answer questions you may have. Please note that this is the Tuesday right after spring break. Hope you can all be there!

March Mathness – March 20-24

As another successful Read-A-Thon comes to an end, Percy Priest is gearing up for our first “March Mathness!” Our teams are ready for fun challenges and hands-on activities that will increase motivation and celebrate our love of problem solving. This will be a friendly and fun competition that will allow students to play games that reinforce math concepts, work as classes to complete grade level challenges, and cheer on teammates in other grades throughout the week! Activities for March Mathness will be school-based but families will have access to a variety of games to play with your children at home. The challenge tips off March 20!

Math Night – March 23rd

READ-A-THON 2023: Some Reader

Read-A-Thon 2023 was indeed (using Charlotte’s word) TERRIFIC!  Our kindergarten readers read well over 7,000 books and our 1st – 4th grade readers read well over 280,000 minutes combined. Hundreds of buttons were earned for completing challenges and over 100 gold medals were given to those students who completed all 6 sections on the Fern’s Farmyard challenge board. After Spring Break we will be hosting Wilbur’s County Fair party and every student who earned the 75 Book Award or 1,000 Minute Award will be honored with a special prize. Excitement for reading has been amped up here at PPE and we hope that this love of learning continues into the rest of the school year, the summer and years to come.

Thank you to all of our amazing volunteers, guest readers, parents, faculty, staff and all those who generously donated both time and money to make this year’s Read-A-Thon such a huge success. We couldn’t do it without you!

• Students who achieve the 75 book and 1,000 minute challenge will be recognized during morning announcements and receive a certificate, medal, and a ticket to Wilbur’s County Fair Party.

Tiger Tennis Social – April 21

Mark your calendars for the 2nd Annual Tiger Tennis Social! On Friday, April 21nd (Rain Date April 28th), we’ll gather at Seven Hills for tennis, fun, a tasty lunch and light cocktails. All skill levels will have fun; just bring a racquet! Various Tennis Clinics and a Round Robin will be played from 10:00am-1:00pm. Come at 9:00am to grab a quick bite and stick around for lunch at 1:00pm. Stay tuned for registration information!

School Fundraisers

Taziki’s Family Meal Night Fundraiser – Order Now!  Pick up March 23

Make it a take-out night for your family while you raise money for our school! 15% of pre-orders will go directly back to the PTO. Deadline for ordering is Wednesday the 22nd at 2pm.  Orders will not be processed after that time.

Orders will be invoiced and prepaid so you can have a fast and easy pick up at the Green Hills location. An invoice will be sent to the email address you provide. Please pay your invoice before pickup day.  We appreciate you and your support!

To pre-order, fill out the form.

Market Fresh Ferns – April 14 deadline to order

If you want the biggest, healthiest Fern on the block and you love Percy Priest, be sure to buy your ferns now through April 14!

Visit our fern webpage to purchase yours today!

Pick-up will be April 19th at the Percy Priest Playground (corner of Wilshire & Priest) from dismissal until 4PM. If you are unable to pick up in that timeframe, please ask a friend for help or email MeganLCallender@gmail.com.

The funds raised from this event will be used to support the PTO budget, which provides our school with additional staff, software and supplies. Thank you so much for your support!

We have two types of ferns available:

Boston Fern (10” and thrives in shady environment) $32

Kimberly Queen (10” and thrives in a sunny environment) $24

General Announcements

J.T. Moore Annual Matador Madness – March 25th

It’s time for the Annual Matador Madness – Parents vs. Faculty Basketball Game – at J.T. Moore! Right now, the Faculty leads the series 4-2! Come join in on the fun and enjoy some hoops with J.T. Moore parents and teachers!

Details:

• Date: March 25th, 2023
• Time: 4:00pm – 6:00pm CST (Doors open at 3:30pm)
• Gameplay: 4 periods, 8 minutes each. 3 male, two females players on the court at a time

3rd Grade Retention Legislation

If you missed the informational community meeting this week, an explanatory video about the law can be found here. MNPS has also put together a great webpage with information about this law. This webpage has the most up to date information and is being updated regularly as the district receives more information from the state.

If families are interested in advocating for changes to the law, please email our school board representative, Erin Block, directly for more information – erin.block@mnps.org.

Kindergarten Registration for the 2023-24 school year will kick off on Monday, January 30th.  If you or someone you know has an incoming kindergartner, please encourage them to complete registration as early as possible.  For information regarding enrollment requirements, please visit https://earlylearning.mnps.org/kindergarten.

Kindergarten Readiness Camp: July 18-19

Calling all Rising Kindergarten girls and boys for 2023-2024 school year.  Save the Date for July 18-19 for our Kindergarten Readiness Camp.  Join Miss Murray Benson & Mrs. Bitsi Condra to get a “Sneak Peek” at a day in the life of a kindergartner!  Your child will have the opportunity to meet new friends, engage in hands-on learning experiences, Tour the school, playground, visit ‘kinder’ classrooms, and so much more!  Registration HERE!

Unicycle Needs Your SSA and Non-SSA Donations (including baseball gear)!

It’s spring cleaning time and Unicycle is looking for SSA donations as well as non-SSA, including baseball gear and sneakers. Please drop those items on the Percy Priest front porch in the designated Unicyle bins. Thank you!

Green Tip from the PPE Green Team

Wearing gently used clothing saves money and helps the environment. The volume of clothing Americans throw away each year has doubled since 2000, from 7 million to 14 million tons, which ends up wasting the valuable natural resources that went into making that clothing. As you are doing that spring cleaning, consider giving outgrown clothing to another family, patching and repairing clothes, when possible, instead of throwing them out, and donating your gently used SSA to UniCycle or Percy’s Vintage Closet!

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 here.

We need your help to make this spring the best 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.

Lands’ End will donate 3% of all qualifying Standard School Attire (SSA) purchases to Percy Priest. Its catalog has a large selection of SSA and PPE logo clothing. Visit Lands’ End to place your order! Be sure to select the Percy Priest Elementary PTO by linking your account to our Preferred School Number: 900121294

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