Happy 2026! I hope everyone had a wonderful winter break and great first week back.

With the start of the new year, we wanted to highlight and celebrate the many wonderful things that the PTO accomplished during Fall/Winter 2025 with your support, and tell you what's on deck for Winter/Spring 2026. 

📣 🥳 Thank you to our Spiritwear Team (Bijal Patel and Jennifer Breaux) for the cool new designs available during the holiday pop-up shop. As committee heads, Bijal and Jennifer create the designs, set up the online store, fill the orders, and deliver the products to JP-- all to keep us looking fresh in our spiritwear! We appreciate it so much. We will have another pop-up opportunity in the spring, so please keep an eye out if you missed it before.

🎓🎊 Thank you to the Fifth Grade Activities Team (Leslie Fabello, Stephanie Oster, and Alexia Burnett-Salinas) for giving our Fifth Grade fundraising such a strong start to the year. The Bake Sale during the November Parent Teacher conferences was super successful, thanks to everyone's kind support. All proceeds will go toward the end of year celebrations to send our Fifth Grade Class of 2026 off in style. Fifth grade is in truly excellent hands!! 

Thank you to Erin Morrison who has helped us with Kindergarten Activities! If you are a rising K or 5th grade parent next school year, please consider joining the committee as it's a wonderful way to be involved during a celebration year.  

🎈🎉 Thank you to the Events Team (Manasi Shah and Kuleen Singh) for running such a successful and joyful Fall Picnic back in September. The picnic was free to JP families with the help of dues and donations. Did you know we smashed Mr. M's conga line record with 406 people in line? Epic. We will host another school-wide picnic in the spring. If you have any sponsorship leads for food (especially dessert!) please be in touch with Manasi or Kuleen.

♣🏆 Many thanks to the Clubs Team (Julia Benedict and Clare Kowalak) who provided JP with an awesome spread of after-school clubs for our students to enjoy Monday through Friday this fall. Organizing and running our clubs roster is a labor of love involving many spreadsheets and endless communications. We truly appreciate you, Julia and Clare!!! Also, thank you to our fantastic teachers who head up so many creative and beloved clubs for our students.

Registration for Winter Clubs opens on January 14, 8pm. Clubs will begin on Jan 27 and run through March 23.  

💝🧁 Speaking of teachers, thank you to the Hospitality Team (Donna Graziano, Kelly Canfield, and Andrea Ramirez) who run our monthly Teacher Appreciation efforts on behalf of JP families. JP teachers truly go above and beyond for our students every day, so the PTO tries to reflect back our love and gratitude with a monthly treat, such as a Welcome Back lunch in September, coffee and donuts in October, and an energy-boosting snack spread in November during the Parent Teacher Conferences.

🫶♡ Thank you also to our Room Leads, who helped organize various holiday parties for each of our classrooms, and collected class gifts for our teachers in December. Every person in JP contributes to our culture of kindness and respect-- thank you to everyone making amazing contributions! 

📈💸🖤 The hardworking engine of the PTO is the Fundraising Team (Lisa Pappas-Taffer, John Crepezzi, and Maggie Phrompechrut) who tirelessly fundraise the budget we need to provide all the support and extra activities that JP families look forward to every year.

🙌  To date this school year, we have raised over $16,000 in dues/direct donations/corporate match and $24,000 from partyboard tickets. We hosted 4 sold out partyboards in December, and we have 21 parties on deck for the remainder of the school year. Thank you to our amazing party hosts and partygoers. Lots of fun planned... and tickets still remaining!  

We'll remind you about upcoming parties every month, so please keep an eye out and join us if you can. JP partyboards are unfailingly fun, high-quality events. Best of all, your ticket price goes directly to support all JP students since the party costs are covered by the hosts. It's a community-building and fundraising win-win. We will remind you again in the coming months about direct donations and corporate match, but you can always donate here or Venmo @JPPTO. 

🎨🎭🚜🧪 More than one-third of our yearly budget goes to support the grade-wide "residencies," which are educational experiences provided by outside professionals that enhance curriculum. Each grade has a budget of $4,000 from the PTO, and teachers decide how to spend the funds:

🎨 Kindergarten will be working with the painter, Marlon Davila, from the Princeton Arts Council. 
🎭 First grade will work with Eyes of the Wild as well as with McCarter Theater, who will provide a theater workshop tied to the first grade fairytale unit. 
🧪 Second grade has a Mad Science assembly planned for the spring. 
🗝️ Third grade does a Historical Society walking tour of Princeton. 
🚜 Fourth Grade works with Howell Living History Farm.
📝 Fifth grade enjoys a Journalism residency. 

So many exciting plans! Thank you to Becky Schutt who is helping facilitate residencies this year, and Ms. Saraison, who is the teacher liaison to make sure all the invoices land in the right place. 

🦍🦍 Almost done! We have so much to share because there's so much good stuff happening at JP.

👑📣 Thank you to our Communications Queen, Deirdre Goodrich, who updates our calendars and sends out announcements. Did you notice that your kids' classes were populated with classmates on Konstella before the first day of school??? That was Deirdre... Queen!! 

❣️🧥👻🦃 Lisa Robinson and Phil Arnold lead up all the amazing community service efforts we have at JP-- the food drives, the warm clothing collections, the Halloween costume drives, the Turkey Trot, Project Joy. Lisa and Phil also chair the Koko Fund, which supports educational equity for JP students needing financial assistance. Lisa and Phil help us stay plugged into our greater Princeton community so our families can give and receive care as needed. We are so grateful for everything you do!! 

💰🤩 Finally, our PTO would be in disarray without our wonderful Treasurer, Veer Patel, who fields countless requests, emails, invoices, and organizes multiple donation streams and expenses into neat budgets so we know which side is up. We are truly grateful for the immense commitment you have showed to JP. 

As you can see, the PTO is a group of amazingly dedicated parents who donate so much time and heart to care for our extraordinary school community. We appreciate the support of the whole JP community so much, and we hope that you'll continue to partner with us in 2026. We have amazing things in the works, including January Service Weeks and International Night in the spring, so stay tuned for updates.

🌟💚🌟💚 Our next two meetings are: FRIDAY, January 9, 8:45am & FRIDAY, February 6, 8:45am in the JP cafeteria. Everyone is welcome. 🌟💚🌟💚

If you are not able to come to meetings but still are interested in volunteering with us, please reach out. Meetings are not mandatory to work with the PTO--and in fact many of our most active PTO committee chairs don't attend meetings because of work commitments. All help is welcome (much of which is done remotely) and we are always looking for new parents to join us and learn the ropes so that activities continue smoothly from year to year.  

With gratitude and best wishes for a happy, healthy 2026,

Grace Wuertz and Danny Allen 
PTO co-presidents 🦍💚