What has the PAC done this year?

What has the PAC been up to this year? We invite and encourage you to come to the PAC meetings (next meeting is the PAC AGM on Tuesday May 24 at 6:45 pm) to find out more.

Our PAC is an active group. We welcome and look forward to new volunteers and ideas to better support our children and school.  Some of the initiatives run by the PAC include:

• Regular PAC Meetings (8 per year) – These meetings are not just for PAC business and planning but are an important communication point with the school. We encourage you to come out.
• After School Activity Programs – A variety of programs (including academic, arts, science and sports) are offered over three sessions through the year. Over a third of our students take advantage of these programs.
• Emergency Supplies – The PAC maintains, organizes and purchases emergency supplies – we hope we will never need these supplies but if we do, we are ready.
• Gardening Program – The PAC funds and has been instrumental in bringing the gardening program and gardening boxes (by the upper playground) to Walton. This year four divisions took part in this program where they learned about seeds, plants, soil, worms and more. They also learned about healthy cooking and how the plants they grow turn into food on the table.
• Newsletters, Website, and Weekly Mouthful (email) - To keep our parent community up to date, we have a website, a monthly newsletter, and a weekly email.
• Classroom Liaisons – The PAC facilitates the election of classroom liaisons for each class. This supports and encourages easier communication with the teachers and within the class parent community.
• Multicultural Support – The PAC recognizes that Walton is made up of families from a diverse group of cultures and languages. We have volunteer multicultural liaisons who translate PAC communications and make recommendations on how best to reach our entire parent/guardian community.
• Community Building Events – This year the PAC put on a Swap Meet/Sale and the Monster Mash Halloween Family Dance. The previous two years we have held a large spring community event (Mother’s Day Tea afternoon event and the Sip N Savour evening event). These are popular community building events and important fundraisers for us and they are a lot of fun!
• Traffic Safety – PAC volunteers help keep our children safe before and after school by monitoring the parking lot and supervising and training teams of Grade 5 students to control the crosswalk.
• Hot Lunches – The PAC offered 11 hot lunches and raised over $5800. New entrees were offered including Flying Wedge pizza, Subway sandwiches, Moa Box sushi, Fuel Catering pastas, and Taco Del Mar tacos and burritos. A new on-line ordering system was also introduced.
• Movie Nights – Popular events with the children and great fundraisers for the PAC.
• Supplemental Workshops – The PAC will periodically bring in workshops for children such as sexual health workshops and boys & girls empowerment workshops. These are entirely optional and run on a cost recovery basis. 
• Fundraising Events to support initiatives at the school.  These fundraisers are the monetary engine that allow the PAC to financially support activities at the school.
  • Read-a-thon to support our school library (over $14000 raised)
  • Entertainment book sales
  • Family photo nights
  • Sports day concession
  • Winter concert bake sale
  • Popcorn, freezie and ice-cream sales
• Support School Needs and Activities. The PAC fundraising enables us to support our school and students financially by funding items and events including:
  • Library books
  • Fieldtrip bus funding
  • Upper and lower playground equipment (the upper playground was replaced in 2015)
  • Classroom smartboards
  • Classroom document cameras and projectors
  • Kindergarten iPads
  • Classroom support funds to enable teachers to purchase classroom supplies
  • Performances brought in by the school
  • Classroom area rugs
  • Support bursaries to ensure all children can take part in activities
  • and more

 
All PAC activities are entirely run by volunteers, without which none of the above could be achieved.
  
We invite all parents and guardians to join us at our final two PAC meetings of the year on Tuesday May 24th and Tuesday June 14th at 6:45pm in the school library.