Leader's Meeting Minutes - 2/12/13

Attendees: SU Treasurer: Julia Slavin [71872], SU Recording Secretary: Alycia McGoldrick [73904], SU Registrar: Anne Valade, Kristin Puliafico [85118], Karen Mericantante [85335], Ruth Kennedy [73899], Kristin Lamont [85193, 71880], Jodi Sponzo [73897]

Items requiring attention are marked in red
ASAP!! Items requiring IMMEDIATE attention are preceded by "ASAP!" and marked in red

Intro/Announcements
Forms for Father/Daughter Sports and Ice Skating were collected.

A request was made that the Troop Directory be attached to a Monday email.

Registration Update
Council updates to the rosters seem to be slow - some girls are not yet appearing in the right troops.  If this is the case, let Anne know.  She can't fix it but can feed it back to Council.

Council tells us that we are ~50 girls short of our registration goal. 
Council is going to try to run a recruitment event - our concern is that if we had those 50 girls registered, we wouldn't have troops to put them in!

Registration fees are going to be going up to $25 per girl - with $15 going to GSUSA and $10 going to GSEM!

Town Events
Father/Daughter Sports Event - Moved to 3/2
Ice Skating Event - February 20th
World Thinking Day - February 22nd

Girl Scout Week - March 10th-16th
Girl Scout Sunday - 3/10
  Looking for volunteers to coordinate with their church (make sure that the clergy knows that it is 3/10 and ask that Scouts be recognized at the very least - varies with sanctuary), and hand out patches.  Churches are: St Teresa's, Union Congregational, Trinity, Martin's Pond, Aldersgate (we will be contacting past volunteers)
  Flyer with details will be posted to the blog.  There will be a collection for NR Food Pantry at St Teresa's that day

Mother/Daughter Daisy Tea - late March/early April

March is Girl Scout Food Pantry month
Tentative date for collection drop off - 3/24
Troop participation was VERY low last year.  The intent is that troops make this a troop activity (service project and learning opportunity).
Flyers will go up on the blog in case troops want to do door to door solicitation of donations.
On collection day, will welcome a handful of additional volunteers to help sort donations - if interested, please contact Julia Slavin at juliaslavin@verizon.net.
Will likely have a collection day (or two) at Stop and Shop where Scouts stand at the doorways requesting and collecting donations.  Will have 1-2 hours slots for troops to sign up to staff.  Details will be in Monday email and posted to the blog.

Vacation Week Gymnastics - 4/19, 9-10:45 a.m.
This will be a single session and space is limited to 65 girls, so sign up early!
Flyer will be distributed in the Monday email and posted to the blog.
Collection will be at March Leader's meeting.

North Reading Garden Club's Arbor Day - 4/26, 6 p.m. at IRP
This event is open to all scouts.  If planning on attending, please email Ruth Kennedy at ruthekennedy@gmail.com so that she can make sure to have adequate supplies.

We will provide a date for an Early Bird Registration event at the March meeting.

The small group discussed ways to make scouts better for the leaders and the girls:
Facebook
Leaders - Have you had success with a troop event, outing, or activity?  Please post it on our Facebook page so that others can benefit from your experience.  If you tied it to a badge or Journey, share that too!

Are you struggling with ideas for a specific topic?  Post your questions on Facebook and take advantage of the collective knowledge of the group.

Do you know of an NR Leader on Facebook who isn't part of the group?  Invite them!

Blog
If you have things that you think would make sense to post to the blog - crafts, outing ideas, badge ideas - please send them along to Amy Kelly at kellys@majekelly.com.  

Next Leaders Meeting is 3/19, 7:30 p.m. at Town Hall