Dear PS 144 Families,
Happy March! As we come out of the darkness of winter, we enter a busy month at PS 144.
We hope that you are enjoying the new website. Over the next few weeks, we will continue to add new content and make sure everything is working well.
One of our big events is coming up this month! Our Culture and .Food Festival is March 16 from 3-7 PM, and we need YOU to help us make it a success. Tickets are $10 for adults, $5 for kids, and include all you can eat and a performance.
For those who don’t know what this event is, we ask families to bring food to share that celebrates a part of their culture for a potluck style meal. In the past, we’ve had tables from Europe, Asia, South and Central America including the Caribbean, Africa, and North America, featuring dishes from China, Japan, Korea, Thailand, Pakistan, India, Israel, Germany, France, Italy, Russia, England, Nigeria, Chile, Brazil, Mexico, The Dominican Re.public, Puerto Rico, regions of the United States, and many many more. With families from over 40 different countries in our school, this event brings out the best of us and of our borough, celebrating our diversity. We also feature performances and folk fashions from around the world.
We need food donations (either home cooked or purchased), table leaders, performers, kids and adults in traditional clothing, decorators, clean up crew, and our community to come eat and share in order to make this event happen. We also need donations of paper products like plates, flatware, and napkins, and we need donations of beverages as well. WE CANNOT DO THIS WITHOUT YOU!
Restaurant night:
Like Pizza? Love Lillian’s? Then we hope you are excited for our first ever Restaurant Night at Lillian’s Pizza. On March 20, from 12-8, the PA will get 20% of your bill on take out and dine in orders (sorry, no delivery). Support a neighborhood institution and your PA at the same time, and keep your kitchen clean!
Residencies continue:
K: Music with Betina/Together in Dance
1: Bricks for Kids concludes, Music with Betina begins
2: Puppetry With Marquis Studios **sharing day March 13**, Architecture upcoming
3: Guggenheim Museum Learning Through Art **Family Day Sunday March 24**, Music with Betina begins
4: Musical Writing Residency **sharing day March 21**, Broadway Class in April
5: Queens Museum of Art begins, DNA learning in May
These enrichment programs give our kids new ways to think about the topics they cover in their regular classes, and they foster creative thinking and working together. They are made possible through your generous donations. If you’d like to make a donation to our Annual Giving campaign, you may do so on our annual giving page. Our Annual Giving is currently at less than half of what we raised last year through our direct giving campaign. Our total fundraising goal from all sources to maintain our current residencies is $149,000.
One way we raise that money is through our Bi-Annual Raffle or Auction, which we last held in November of 2017. We raffled off 30 days of prizes, including 4 park hopper tickets to Disney World, over 30 days. This is our off year, but we need to have a similar event next year to maintain our programming, and solicitation for donated prizes should begin THIS SPRING. We need several volunteers to form the Raffle Committee. We can help you with spreadsheets of who has given in the past, and the nuts and bolts of how to host the raffle. If you are interested, please contact us at
president@pa144.com .
We have lots of ways that you can help, from big jobs to small, and lots of opportunities for those of you who are interested in doing more to learn how on easy projects. We’ll have a PA job fair at our General Meeting on March 18 at 7 PM in the cafeteria. We hope to see you there. Remember, YOU are the PA.
The PA Executive Board
