The meeting was called to order at 7:26 p.m. in the Chef’s Hat by Al Wilder. Mr. Wilder thanked everyone for coming and gave a special thanks to Ms. Ford for coming through at the last minute to facilitate our end of year scholarship commitments.

Attendance: Laurie Vertefeuille (PFO President), Al Wilder (PFO Vice President), Karen Ford (PFO Treasurer), Corinne Fitting (PFO Secretary), Cindy Hair, Kristen Michaud, Kirk Murad (WT Principal) Mary-Paule Monks (WT Guidance), Sandy Campbell (WT Guidance)

Secretary’s Report: Minutes from the May 8 meeting accepted with no changes. Minutes from today’s meeting will be distributed by e-mail to those in attendance for concurrence or modification so we can get them posted to the web site.

Treasurer’s Report: Checking Account Balance is $1086.38 ($99.50 of which are held for reimbursement to other organizations). Ms. Ford presented a detailed accounting of all PFO funds for the year. One small correction was noted – the Jumbo Jack pending disbursement is $137.05, not $137.50. Ms. Ford noted that there was an error in tracking for Alex Bousquet Scholarship Fund for the past 3 months – it should have been $715. The error doesn’t affect PFO totals, just the internal tracking. Ms. Ford submitted revised reports for March, April and May correcting the tracking error. The June report includes disbursement of $1000 for scholarships and $250 for the Skills USA National Conference. We are still waiting for a check from the Alumni Association to match our bottled water sales. One thing we should work on is increasing membership in the PFO.

Old Business:

Clothing drive: Made $277.50 on the clothing drive. It took some time, but was not a difficult fund-raiser to manage. We probably want to consider conducting this again next year, perhaps in the fall so we don’t overlap with ECSU’s drive again. It was suggested that we also have a few collection days during the week so teachers and other staff can contribute more easily. If we get a pick-up date for the fall – late October – we could put a notice in with the beginning of the year letter the school sends out in mid-August. It was also suggested that we put membership forms and a cookbook order form in with that mailing.

Ms. Hair suggested having a contact e-mail and voice mail for the PFO might make it easier for people to find us. Mr. Murad will check on the possibility of setting something up for us that the PFO President or a designee could check regularly.

(Ms. Vertefeuille joined the meeting. She distributed a letter of thanks to everyone for all their efforts this year. Ms. Vertefeuille deserves tremendous thanks for everything she did as President this year, always being available and at the school, running many concessions by herself and keeping us all going this year!)

Cookbooks: Ms. Vertefeuille suggested selling cookbooks at 3rd Thursday in Willimantic. The cost is $25 to rent a space from 6-9 p.m. The event takes place the 3rd Thursday in July, August, September and October. It was decided to try it on July 19. Ms. Vertefeuille will send in the paperwork, and Ms. Fitting will send out an e-mail to get people to man the table.

Linda R. Martin Foundation dinner-dance on May 18: The dinner-dance went very well. The Foundation took in approximately $7000-8000. They learned quite a bit, and will probably make some changes to the format next year. Great prizes for the silent auction helped.

Voting for New Officers: The proposed slate was: President – Laurie Vertefeuille; Vice-President – Al Wilder (until December); Treasurer – Karen Ford; Secretary – Corinne Fitting. No additional nominations were made. The vote carried unanimously. Will need to address the V.P. position in November or sooner.

New Business:

Chronicle Article on Cookbook: Ms. Hair reported that Chef Brown got in touch with the reporter, as requested, but it seems the article was dropped. Ms. Hair will contact them again in the fall to see if we can drum up a little support for the cookbook.

Field Day: Ms. Vertefeuille and Ms. Ford manned a tech-wear table at field day, but sales were minimal – students had money for other activities that day. It probably is not worth setting up a table next year.

Tech-wear Flyer and Order form: Ms. Hair put together a tech-wear flyer with pictures of the items we’ll be offering, prices and an order form. The cost of printing is pretty high however - $1.18 per sheet. Ms. Monks suggested perhaps one of the tech school print shops could do a run for us at cost and will check into that possibility. In the meantime, we’d like to include a flyer in the beginning of the year letter, so Ms. Vertefeuille will check with a local printer to see if we can get a better price. We want to add a pullover sweatshirt to the offerings also. Ms. Hair will add that in.

Varsity Jackets: Mr. Wilder checked into pricing with JC Embroidery for varsity jackets, and received a quote, which he distributed (base price is $143 for a wool jacket with leather sleeves, $85 for wool with polytex sleeves). We can offer the jackets, but not the numbers or letters – students have to earn those. We’ll add this to the tech-wear flyer. Ms. Michaud will check to see if we can get some samples for students to try on because of the significant cost.

Scholarships: Four scholarship of $250.00 each were awarded by the PFO to the Senior Class. The recipients were: Michael Wilder, Austin Mecure, Robert Pratt, and Carl Floran.

Concessions for Awards (during the school day), Senior Awards Night and Graduation: Ms. Vertefeuille set up tables’ at all three events and sold a considerable amount of tech wear and bottled water, and a few cookbooks. These were good events to have tech-wear and bottled water available. She recommends setting up for graduation around 4:00 next year.

Ms. Hair brought thank you notes for WalMart for the $75 gift certificate they donated and to Jumbo Jacks for their work on the cookbook, which PFO members signed. Ms. Vertefeuille made thank you cards for culinary and the maintenance crew for their help with PFO meetings this year.

We will need to meet in early August to prepare for the up-coming year. Everyone have a great summer!