Thornhill Elementary PFC Newsletter

Hello Thunderbirds,

We’re excited to formally kickoff this year’s Annual Fund Drive! As we hope you know by now, the generous donations from our Thornhill community allow us to provide critical programs and personnel for our children that are not covered by state or district funding.

The Annual Fund is the PFC’s first and most significant fundraising effort of the school year. Our goal is to raise $220,000 to help cover expenses for these extraordinary educational experiences that would otherwise not exist at our school. Your support is critical in providing enrichments like PE, Library, Music, Gardening, SIX Teaching Assistants for Student Support and much more!

Every student benefits immediately from the generosity of your annual fund contribution. A gift should be made in an amount that is meaningful and generous for your family. While the suggested donation amount is $1,100 per student, a gift—no matter the size—makes a lasting impact on the student experience. We accept donations year round, thru a variety of channels with installment options. Our goal is to receive donations from 100% of our Thornhill families!

You can double or triple your contribution to the Thornhill PFC by taking advantage of your corporate match benefit. Many companies, both large and small, will match donations made by their employees. It only takes five minutes. To see if your employer offers matching gifts, visit Charity Navigator to submit a match request online.

Here are some companies that offer a matching program: Disney, Pixar, AAA, Expedia, Google, Pandora, Kaiser, Genentech, PayPal, Apple, Salesforce, Williams Sonoma, Microsoft and more!

Link to pdf Form

Thank you for your continued support!

Selam Brown, Stefani Miller, Deepa Lounsbury & Annie Sartor

Annual Fund Co-Chairs

annualfund@thornhillschool.org

Thornhill takes waste reduction seriously with in-class education and partnerships. This week and next, the Green Team will bring education on waste sorting and distribute waste collection boxes into each classroom. Students will hear about the importance of reducing landfill waste by sorting waste items into recycling, composting, and landfill bins in the classroom, the cafeteria, and the outside grounds. There are so many amazing ways we can re-use snack wrappers and bags, paper, cardboard, barely eaten or uneaten foods, and more! One of our key partners in this effort is Ridwell, a B Corporation (certified sustainable) that takes our plastic film and recycles it. Thornhill won a full-year subscription to Ridwell for the 2024-2025 school year, thanks to supportive families. Within the last 4 months of school this past spring, the school recycled somewhere close to 32,000 wrappers! Let's continue this incredible movement that our kids are doing with the support of their teachers!

This Friday! Join us for the Green Team's first monthly meeting. It's fun, convivial, and productive!

Friday August 30, 5-6pm

Taps & Take Out, Montclair

We urgently need at least 4 volunteers each morning and 4 in the afternoon every single day the school is open. We desperately need more people to step up.

Sign up to volunteer on the regular or pick random days that work for your schedule. Please, join the 12+ committed volunteers who have been holding it all together—your help is crucial!

Sign up here:

Morning Drop-Off Volunteers

Afternoon Pick-Up Volunteers

As a reminder, please bring your patience, good humor, and safety brain during drop off and pick up. A few reminders to that end:

• Please don't speed on Thornhill (or any neighborhood street for that matter): the speed limit is 25 mph throughout and 15 mph in the school zone. There will be kids walking and biking up and down Thornhill and it is extremely unpleasant and unsafe to have drivers going 30+ mph on the corridor.

• Please don't park at 7-11, in business parking lots, or in front of neighbors' driveways, even if "just for a minute." One of the neighbors across the street is a nurse who works the nightshift. They have been delayed getting home from work in the morning because a Thornhill family parked in their parking spot to drop off in the morning. Please don't be that person!!

• Please no u-turns in front of the school or anywhere else on Thornhill, except at Merriewood Drive.

• Please be patient - we want ALL our kids to get to and from school safely!

Email Ian Storrar at quickdrop@thornhillschool.org with questions or to volunteer.

Lost and Found is filling up, and we're only two weeks in! All that shiny new back-to-school gear? Yep, it’s chillin in Lost and Found instead of with your kiddos. Swing by and reclaim your stuff!

Please (please!) label all clothing, jackets, sweaters, lunch boxes, small food containers, water bottles, hats, beanies, instruments, backpacks, etc. When the Lost & Found gets too full, we will notify the community before donating unclaimed items.

ShopRaise Partnership
We’re excited to introduce our new partnership with ShopRaise this year! Whether you're buying daily essentials like groceries, shopping for home office furniture, or booking your next trip, the ShopRaise app allows you to raise funds for Thornhill Elementary while you shop online—all at no extra cost to you. Now, your everyday shopping can directly support our school. Click the link here to learn more and download the app.

If you’re still looking for an after school activity, check out the following Fall 2024 after-school Enrichment classes:

• Mary Ellen’s fabulous, fun and creative FAD PAD
• Dana Zed’s after school ceramics

Congratulations! Now you’re in the know about everything going on at Thornhill! Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions relating to Thornhill Communications (Konstella, Newsletter, Website and Room Parents). Thank you to this year’s awesome team: Annie Sartor (Newsletter), Kathryn Miggels (Room Parents) and Sylvia Sudat (Webmaster).

- Jill Evans (VP Communications)

The Thornhill Parent-Faculty Club (PFC) eNews team publishes this weekly newsletter each Tuesday in the school year to communicate school, PFC and OUSD news, events and information. We all have plenty of other things to do, but please try to read it weekly, as it will more than likely answer most questions you have about what’s up at school. Information about how to submit to the newsletter is below, but you can reach out to us at any time at newsletter@thornhillschool.org.

Email submissions to our Newsletter Chair, Annie Sartor, at newsletter@thornhillschool.org by 8 p.m. Thursday for approval—nothing sent after this will be included in the following week’s newsletter unless there are extenuating circumstances. It’s fine to include text in the body of the email with links and no formatting, and attach photos preferably as 150 x 150, 72 dpi JPG or GIFs only (not embedded in email or word file). Submissions may be edited for spelling, grammar, brevity and clarity. Advertising and items not related to Thornhill are not accepted, as we need to keep the newsletter focused on need-to-know info for the community.

THANK YOU to everyone who submits articles and to PFC Board Members, Teachers, PFC co-Presidents Becky Gonzales and Catrina Vrankovich, VP of Communications Jill Evans, and Principal Steve Daubenspeck, member of Oakland Unified School District (OUSD).