April 1st, 10am – 12pm

We need your support to make the HIP packing party a success! Please sign-up to donate food and/or sign-up for a short, 30 minute volunteer shift. More info about all the awesome opportunities for your family to participate on Spring Service Day and Sign-Up Genius links are below. Thank you for getting involved, giving back, and helping community!

Ways to Participate:

Help put together Healthy HIP Packs for the Hunger Intervention Program

Kids and families are invited to assemble food packs in the cafeteria (no RSVP needed). Bryant’s Student Hunger Service Project is excited to bring this opportunity back for the first time since COVID!

Volunteers are needed to help the packing party run smoothly. 30 minute volunteer slots are available for adults, kids and caregiver/kid pairs.

HIP PACK VOLUNTEERS:Sign-Up Genius

Donate food items for the Healthy HIP Packs (food donations due by 3/30)

Please review the list of food items needed and sign up for the quantity you can donate to ensure we have the right amount for each pack. 

HIP PACK DONATIONS: Sign-Up Genius

Plant seeds and work in the Bryant Garden

Please RSVP so we know who is coming!

GARDEN WORK PARTY:Garden Work Party Sign-Up Genius

Join the Move-A-Thon activity stations

Move-A-Thon happens on the Bryant playground in support of the Southeast Seattle Schools Fundraising Alliance. If you would like to help plan or run the Move-A-Thon activities, please sign-up here: https://www.signupgenius.com/go/4090d4eabad2ea1f58-moveathon#/

Donate grocery gift cards for our sister school

Cards will be distributed to their students for Spring Break. Bring $25 QFC/Kroger gift cards to the event or donate online. 

We are excited to come together to build community, celebrate the beginning of spring, give back, and have fun! Donut and beverages will be provided. 

Please join the Bryant school funding email campaign by sending an email to the SPS School Board Directors (an email template and contact info are below).  

Background

• SPS and the School Board are considering balancing the budget shortfall through cuts to school funding.
• If SPS and the School Board make further budget reductions, our school would likely continue to grow in students while staff resources are cut.  This could have have significant impacts to our school including in the following ways:
  • If changes to staffing formulas are made, class ratio sizes could increase.
  • If administrative staff, such as the Assistant Principal, are cut or reduced in hours, operational and program resources would be impacted;  
  • If funding is further reduced for specialist staff (exemplified by the librarian, music, art, and PE teachers) and other critical staff, the school will have fewer teachers and staff available to serve a significant number of students. 
• As families seek stable school resources and a quality, competitive education for their students, we must advocate during the School Board/SPS budget decision process happening now for no further cuts to student-facing positions, impacting critical, specialist staff and classroom ratio sizes.

Action

• Please add your voice to the message by sending an email to the SPS School Board Directors by Monday, January 23rd (or before).  A suggested email template is below. Please feel free to add your student’s personal story, highlighting impacts to them from budget cuts.  The email addresses to send your email to are below.

Send the email to the SPS School Board Directors at the contact information here:

———————————————————

Bryant School Funding Email Suggested Text

Dear SPS School Board Directors,

253 Bryant elementary parents and caregivers signed onto a Bryant PTSA letter to District 3 School Board Director Chandra Hampson in December, asking her to ensure Bryant receives full funding this year based on SPS policies and formulas for enrollment-based funding.  Further, we urged her to work to ensure that the projected SPS budget shortfall is not covered by cutting critical school staff and increasing student-teacher ratio sizes.

I email today to echo this call, particularly as you develop the funding policies which will impact next year’s budget.  Bryant is growing in enrollment and needs more student-facing positions along with a stable budget, not additional cuts creating further gaps in education resources and instability in school administration.  Since the school continues to have significant numbers of students, cuts will only require fewer teachers and staff to serve those students.

Budget cuts are having serious impacts at the school. In the case of the library funding cuts due to outstanding funding allocations from SPS this year, student library checkouts have been reduced to half, impacting the students’ independent reading opportunities and early development of good reading habits. 

[Please add a sentence or two telling the School Board your family’s story about any impact to your student from school resource cuts (e.g. any impacts to your student/s from teacher cuts, education program cuts, and/or the reduction of the Assistant Principal to half time since last year…).

I urge that, during the current budget decision process, the SPS School Board and SPS Administration make no further cuts to student-facing positions and that the critical staff positions, including the Assistant Principals, are fully funded.

Specifically, I ask for:

• No changes to staffing formulas so that class-ratio sizes increase.
• No further cuts to administrative staff, including the Assistant Principal position. 
• No further funding cuts to specialist staff (exemplified by the librarian, music, art, and PE teachers) and other critical school staff.

Thank you.

Sincerely,

Add your name, your child/children’s school, and your relationship to the student at Bryant

_________

1 https://www.seattletimes.com/education-lab/seattle-school-enrollment-levels-off-but-district-still-faces-budget-woes/#:~:text=Seattle%20is%20projecting%20a%20budget,%24156.8%20million%20the%20following%20year

Volunteers and Donations needed

4^th annual hygiene kit service activity

MLK day Monday 1/16 from 10:00am-11:30am

Outdoors under the Bryant Elementary basketball courts

What is a Hygiene kit?

Hygiene kits are new 1 gallon zip loc bags filled with a variety of packaged snacks and useful products that will bring warmth and hope to a person in need. We organize and deliver these kits to the Miller Community Center in Capitol hill, which provides shampoo, soap, and hot showers to local residents. The kits get passed out to folks after their shower. Last year, the Bryant community donated 205 kits!

What the event will look like:

The whole family is welcome. We’ll have several tables set up at the basketball courts with loads of new items ready to organize into kits. There will be music, a letter writing station, and free Starbucks coffee for volunteers.

How to help:

• PURCHASING items ASAP directly from this registry (simplest way) or bringing some in on your own https://www.target.com/gift-registry/gift/bryant-service-kits
•  HANDWRITING notes at the note/drawing station at the event
• LOANING out your folding table for the event – we’ll need many tables to help organize all the items email A
• SORTING the items out during the event with your fellow community volunteers.

Useful items include new socks, new gloves, packaged snacks, nail clippers, cotton swabs, masks, lip balm, lotion, sanitizer, toothpaste, toothbrushes, deodorant, band aids, cough drops, hand warmers. No razors. Soap and shampoo is already provided at the Miller CC. Feminine products are welcome – they will be organized separately and placed in the women’s restroom.

Thank you for acting fast! contact Alexis Landry with any questions landry.alexis@gmail.com