The PTO provides teachers and staff (including PreK) Panera gift cards for conference day each November. This allows them to go out for a nice lunch during this very long day.
We provide restaurant gift cards for the paras and lunch/maintenance staff and Poinsettias for the office staff
Write up pending
Staff Appreciation Week is the first week in May. Activities are designed by committee chairs in conjunction with the Board member. This has varied over the years.
Communications should reference Staff Appreciation rather than Teacher Appreciation. All are included in the festivities.
Planning:
The committee was so good about starting their planning back in February / March to get all of their ducks in a row. It was a big undertaking, so the sooner they get started, the less stressed they'll be in the final days leading up to the big week.
Run all plans past the front office for timing and interest.
Components:
Raffle - The goal is to have every staff member receive something. Some may win a raffle basket and some may receive gift cards. The front office helps keep track of who receives what, to make sure everyone gets something.
Pull the winner of the biggest item first
Remove names of those who have won in the prior pull
Items donated by families are curated into baskets, generally with a theme. Signup Genius worked great in soliciting donations from parents. The committee was smart to suggest "themes" of donations with a signup option for each, so it didn't just wind up being 30 different parents all donating the same thing, like a bottle of wine or something.
Catered Lunch - This has typically been a Mexican themed lunch, as it falls during the week of Cinco de Mayo. However, the biggest challenges were around catered lunch. It quickly became apparent that lunch from La Salsa was going to take up a lot of the $1,200 budget. The committee checked a couple of other Mexican options (La Cabanita) and nothing else was cheaper. It also might be worth exploring a couple non-Mexican options to see if anything's cheaper or of more interest to the staff.
Encourage next year's team to avoid Wednesday for the lunch. Since it's early lunch at Barnsdale that day, it made it difficult to get the catered lunch delivered that early. So Tuesday or Thursday would give more wiggle room. We wanted to avoid Friday so there would be leftovers, particularly for staff not in all 5 days.
Other Days:
Activities have varied each year as to what is done each day of Staff Appreciation Week.
Ideas:
Bring in muffins & coffee
Chair massages
Personal notes from students
Continental Breakfast
Cookies
Chalk the Block
Big sign out front of the school
Balloon arch