School Fundraisers

This Saturday, April 20, put your imagination in gear and come to Oak View Nursery School first ever Touch a Truck event! At Touch a Truck, kids (and grownups, too) will get a chance to get behind the wheel of some amazing vehicles and rub elbows with their hometown heroes.
 
Come and explore your favorite vehicles including fire trucks, dump trucks, buses, tow trucks, race cars, and even Coast Guard drones. It will definitely be a day to remember!

Touch a Truck takes place from 9:30 am to 12:30 pm. Admission is $5 per person, and kids under 1 are free. The first 100 kids to attend will get a free goodie bag. All proceeds from this event will fund special programing for Oak View Nursery School students.

Speak to Me, producer of Marin's intelligent and inspiring series of events for women, has partnered with the YES! Foundation, Ross Valley School District Parent Education, and KIDDO! to do two benefit screenings (100% of proceeds go to YES! and KIDDO!) of the film Miss Representation. If you aren't familiar with the film, it has won all sorts of awards and has received accolades and praise from everyone from Oprah to Common Sense Media.

The film was written, produced, and directed by Jennifer Siebel Newsom, and exposes how mainstream media contribute to the under-representation of women in positions of power and influence in America. The film challenges the media’s limited and often disparaging portrayals of women and girls, which make it difficult for women to achieve leadership positions and for the average woman to feel powerful herself.

Common Sense Media says "It's informative and enlightening and will be a total eye-opener for girls and their mothers. Show it to your girls AND your boys".

You deserve a night out at the movies right? And you can help raise a little much-needed money for our schools while you're at it.

The film screenings will take place on:

• Wednesday, January 9, 2013 at Drake High School Little Theatre, 1327 Sir Francis Drake Boulevard, San Anselmo. 100% of net proceeds go to the YES! Foundation
• Wednesday, January 16, 2013 at Mill Valley Middle School, 425 Sycamore Avenue, Mill Valley. 100% of net proceeds go to the KIDDO! Foundation

Last year, volunteers at Novato's Pleasant Valley Elementary School created the Spooky Swamp, a family friendly haunted house, for the school's annual Halloween Happening for students and their families. It was so popular that they decided not only to re-create it this year, but open it to the public as well! The Spooky Swamp will be open for one night only, Saturday, October 27, from 4 to 8:30 pm.

Walk in to the school's multi-purpose room and be transported to Mardi Gras in New Orleans. One wrong turn though and you'll find yourself in the Spooky Swamp. Luckily, a hillbilly tour guide will help you wind your way through the perils of the swamp and its structures, avoiding alligators and other haunts along the way. You never know what lurks around the corner or behind that tree stump! The Spooky Swamp is a good old fashioned haunted house that's appropriate for elementary school-age children and families. There's no blood, no gore, no violent images, and the actors take care to adjust their level of scariness to the age of the children in each group.

Admissionto the Spooky Swamp is $5 per person, ages 4 and up. All proceeds go to support Pleasant Valley Elementary School.

It's Summerfest time! Come have fun and help save critical school programs for San Rafael City Schools at the HeadsUp Summerfest Carnival on Saturday, September 29, 2012 from 11 am to 5 pm.

This fun and free event takes place at San Rafael High School and features game booths, a giant slide, bounce houses, a petting zoo, face painting, henna body art, photo booth, kiss-a-pig, a dunk tank, wheel of fortune, art displays, performances by school music groups, BBQ treats, local band GWood Gents, and more. Also on hand will be the celebrated Summerfest Cake Walk—show off your baking skills or join the fun and win a cake.

Students can submit entries to the essay writing and art contest with the theme Making San Rafael a Better Place to Live. Write an essay on no more than one page that tells what you do now, what you will do, or what you'd like to do someday to make San Rafael an even better place to live. Winning essays will be from four age groups: grades K–2, 3–5, middle school, and high school. Entries are due by Friday, September 21; mail to HeadsUp, PO Box 150157, San Rafael, CA 94901, attn: K. Murphy.

Love backyard chickens? Thinking of taking the plunge and setting up a coop for your own feathered friends? Then check out Novato's second annual Pleasant Valley Coop Tour, taking place on Sunday, September 9, 2012. You'll get to tour some of Marin's swankest avian homes, learn about the art of backyard chicken keeping, the finer points of coop construction, and the rewards of chicken ownership. You'll also be supporting Novato's Pleasant Valley Elementary School and its outdoor education programs, so it's all for a great cause.

Tickets for this self-guided tour and innovative school fundraiser cost $10. You can order them online or in person at Novato Horse and Pet Supply at 7546 Redwood Boulevard.

All that chicken coop touring will make you hungry, so lunch is available to purchase with your ticket, too. Featuring locally organic ingredients and prepared by Novato's White Rose Ranch, box lunches cost $15 for adults and $7.50 for children.

If you go to one rummage sale this year, this is the one you do not want to miss! The Pleasant Valley Elementary School Rummage Sale takes place this Saturday, April 21 from 9 am–3 pm. This is the first major rummage sale for the school, and over 350 families have dug through closets, kids' rooms, and garages and contributed their treasures to this fundraiser. Rummage sale volunteers have weeded through the donations so only quality items will be available for sale—but at rummage sale prices, of course.

Some of the great items offered will include gently used children's clothing and shoes; sporting equipment, winter wear, skis, bikes, and strollers; toys, books, games and movies; adult clothing, shoes, and accessories; and tools, small appliances and housewares.

Early birds can enjoy the coffee and bake sale until the doors open at 9 am sharp, but will not be allowed early entry. The sale will close from 1–1:30 pm to get ready for the half-price sale from 1:30–3pm

Pleasant Valley Elementary School is located at 755 Sutro Avenue (between Center and Vineyard Roads) in Novato. The sale will take place in the school's multi-purpose room, so it will happen rain or shine.

Help raise funds for Novato's schools at the 2011 Tour of Novato, an annual bicycling event organized by School Fuel, the Novato Foundation for Public Education, this Saturday, April 30 from 7 am to 3 pm. You can sponsor an existing rider or sign up to ride yourself—registration is accepted the day of the event starting at 6 am. There are three possible routes to ride, ranging from easy to challenging, and a Cycling for Schools FunFair at San Marin High School starting at 9 am.

The Tour of Novato is School Fuel's biggest fundraiser for the Novato Unified School District, and has raised over $238,000 for Novato schools over the last three years. All money raised goes directly to the schools, with money raised by each rider going directly to the school they represent.

Get a jump on your holiday shopping, and get excited about reading at Pleasant Valley Elementary School's 2009 Book Fair—Destination Book Fair: Read Around the World. Organized in cooperation with Scholastic, the Book Fair offers hundreds of different titles for all ages—even parents, with many at bargain prices, in both paperback and hardcover. Popular titles and series include Flat Stanley, Magic Tree House, I Spy, Diary of a Wimpy Kid, and more.

Destination Book Fair takes place from November 16 through 20 in the multi-purpose room at Novato's Pleasant Valley Elementary School, located at 755 Sutro Avenue (between Center and Vineyard Roads). Hours are Monday-Thursday 8 am to 2 pm and Friday from 8 am to 1 pm, with a family shopping night on Wednesday, November 18 from 6:30 to 8:30 pm. The Fair is open to the public, and inexpensive Scholastic books made great gifts and stocking stuffers.

Books may be purchased with cash, check, or credit card, and all proceeds go to support the school. You can also purchase books to donate directly to the school library and classrooms.

Residents of Novato will have two opportunities to help the perennially cash-strapped Novato Unified School District this week. For reasons not totally clear, Novato schools receive considerably less funding per student than other districts in the county; NUSD gets $8,346 per student while other Marin school districts get anywhere from $9,000 to $12,000. For more information, here's a link to the NUSD's resolution and abbreviated text of Measure A (PDF).

Tomorrow, Tuesday, June 2, Novato voters will vote on Measure A, which increases the annual parcel tax by $96 a year. Novato's parcel tax, at $155, is one of the lowest in the US, and doesn't automatically increase on a yearly basis like those in the Dixie, Lagunitas, Ross, Reed, and other school districts. When you break it down, that's just a little over a quarter per day, probably something you'd just end up leaving in the tip jar at your favorite coffee place. Let's help keep Novato a desirable place for families to live and help the schools keep (in spite of their low funding) their excellent overall reputation!