Thank You from the Friends of the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. School
This non‐profit parent group exists to support our school and strengthen our school community.
Year in Review
What a great year! Our school moved to a beautiful new school building, had many great events, and parents re‐formed the school parent group as a nonprofit. Here are some highlights from MLK Friends:
September 2015: The MLK parent group funded the T‐shirts for every child, teacher and staff person at the school.
October 2015: We successfully re‐launched our parent group as a nonprofit, the Friends of the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. School (MLK Friends), so donations to our organization are tax deductible. We established a PayPal account to allow people to give online.
November 2015: MLK Friends worked with the librarian to organize the Scholastic Book Fair, assisted with the Chinese book fair, and helped ensure that every child at the school could purchase at least one book. We also launched our annual appeal letter in the month of November.
January 2016: MLK Friends funded the Dr. Martin Luther King celebration for the school, including the evening storyteller, the decorations, and the birthday cake. We purchased some items teachers requested for their classrooms. Also in January we finalized our annual appeal. Thank you so much to all who donated to the appeal!
February 2016: MLK Friends sponsored the Chinese New Year celebration lunch for students and teachers. In February we also finished up a survey of what MLK Friends can do to help teachers. Thank you to all teachers and staff for giving us your feedback! We have incorporated teachers’ feedback into events and purchases this year and into planning for next year.
March 2016: MLK Friends funded pizza for the “National Geographic Map of Asia” night, and supplies and pizza for the Lantern parade.
April 2016: The Porter Square Book Fair helped raise more funding so MLK Friends can fund more great projects. MLK Friends purchased several books requested by the school librarian from the Porter Square Book store. MLK Friends purchased snacks for the students taking the PARCC exam.
May 2016: MLK Friends sponsored dinner for the Family Literacy Night.
June 2016: MLK Friends funded the pianist for the June 10 school concert. MLK Friends set aside funds for the 5th grade field trip, and sponsored scholarships to allow MLK students to attend the MLK Community school summer camp. MLK Friends purchased some supplies for the school art show. As requested by teachers in the survey, MLK Friends purchased popsicles so all classrooms can have a popsicle party at recess during the last few days of school.
Congratulations and thanks to all the teachers and staff at Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. School for a wonderful year of learning and fun!
Looking ahead to next year
July‐August 2016: MLK Friends will organize and sponsor refreshments for the playground playdates to help parents and children new to our school join our school community and connect those already at the school over the summer. Please join us at our school playground for these playdates: Sun., July 17, 3 ‐ 5PM; Sat., Aug 6, 10AM ‐ 12Noon; Tue., Aug 30, 4 - 6PM.
Fall 2016: We will submit Box Tops for Education.
MLK Friends will run the School Council elections in the fall. Please email us if you are interested in running for School Council or for an officer position at MLK Friends (Note these are two separate groups. Learn more >>
MLK Friends looks forward to working with the teachers and staff at our school to sponsor next year’s t‐shirts, school‐wide events such as puppet shows and author visits, and other great events to strengthen our community.
A big thanks to all our supporters!
We thank all the teachers and staff of the school for their work organizing special events, and Gerald Yung and Marguerite Hicks‐Gyewu for their help with the work of MLK Friends.
Click here to see a list of parents who contributed to our MLK community by donating their time to events, donating funding to the Friends of the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. School annual appeal, serving on the School Council or serving as room parents. Thank you all!