The Parents’ Club approved allocations to support the Alan Harvey Theater renovation, the service learning project, new laptops for the science department, and emergency preparedness at their December meeting.

Parents’ Club president Dane Copeland said PHS’s Parents’ Club is going to contribute $25,000 to the Alan Harvey Theater renovation. Altogether, the Associated Parents’ Clubs of Piedmont, which includes the parents’ clubs from the five other Piedmont school sites, is hoping to get $75,000 total.

“All parents’ boards decided to take some money from their reserves and put it towards Alan Harvey, kind of proving that yes, we all see that Alan Harvey is really a benefit for the entire community, not just Piedmont High School,” Giving Campaign co-chair Amanda Docter said.

Copeland said they also allocated an additional $1000, for a total of $2000, towards emergency preparedness for non-perishable foods. They approved approximately $10,000 per year for a four-year lease to purchase science laptops and amended their budget to rename $5,000 for service learning curriculum. Additionally, they helped update the PHS website.

Principal Brent Daniels said initiatives such as the science laptop pilot and last year’s addition of the chromebooks help to inform the school on how to move forward, in this case, adding to the discussion about having a one-to-one learning environment.

“Helping with these small pilots and initiatives will really help the school learn, so that when we make a recommendation, we have data to fall back on,” Daniels said. “So without this funding, it’d make it challenging to support experimental or innovative work.

Copeland said these allocations were not part of a special campaign.

“This was looking at money that we had sitting in our bank, and deciding how we could make sure it would be effectively used for students this year, and going forward how students would be able to benefit from it,” Copeland said.

The biggest fundraiser for raising school funds is the Giving Campaign. Donations provided by parents and community members are given to the Parents’ Club, which throughout the school year, decides where to distribute funds towards.

“The school district is always short money because taxes don’t pay for everything,” Docter said.

Docter said they want everyone to have a great high school experience and benefit from living in this community.

“It takes a village,” Docter said. “Parents know that the schools are underfunded, and so we have to step up both financially and with our time to help at the school.”

Parents’ Club treasurer Amal Smith said they develop a relatively conservative budget each year, taking into account their annual, on-going commitments to the school and to the district.

“Think of it as a savings account where you put some money away every year until you have enough to make a big purchase. After all that is taken into consideration, the Parents’ Club looks at what is left to spend and what are the goals and priorities for the school,” Smith said

Copeland said Parents’ Club works with administrators, teachers, and parents, as well as goes to site council meetings and curriculum forum meetings to help them decide how to spend their money.

Junior Franklin Johnson said in this tough economic times, the schools need all the money it can get.

“We need money to buy resources for students,” Johnson said. “It’s great that the Parents’ Club is here to help us out.”

Daniels said moving forward, he hopes to continue working closely with Parents’ Club to find ways to create a healthy learning environment for students of all grades and schools.

“They really serve as a valuable resource either through their intellectual capital or monetary capital, or capital in the form of their time,” Daniels said.