SAVE THE DATE!

Come on out to American Flatbread (45 Day St, Somerville, in Davis Square) Tuesday, April 4 from 4-10pm to support our school! American Flatbread will donate $4/large flatbread and $2/small flatbread purchased on that day to Families of RAUC (FRAUC), which provides funds to the school for field trips, school community events, graduation activities, club supplies, and more! You can do eat-in, take-out, or delivery (must use the Delivery Link on American Flatbread’s website). See you there!

Huge thank you to everyone who help dream, decorate, bake, donate money for 30 pizzas and decorations and clean up! By all accounts, the RAUC Winter Dance (the first dance in THREE years!) was a huge success. The theme, created by the student council was Midnight in Paris. We not only had a fabulous Paris themed dance hall with mood lighting and city scapes of Paris, but a Cafe de Paris with a fabulous storefront sketched out by a talented parent and painted by a great group of creative students. In addition to the 30 pizzas from Cambridge House of Pizza, the cafe served fruit, donated baked goods from parents and Revival, french bread from Iggy’s and macarons courtesy of an amazing RAUC parent! The students had a great time dancing – at one point I heard the entire school belting out “Let it Go!” in unison. More photos here!

Thank you to everyone who baked, made signs and contributed to a great RAUC staff celebration today. It is so heart warming to see how small contributions from many can add up to such a wonderful show of appreciation for the great RAUC staff! They were absolutely thrilled!

Sara Flynn spearheaded a great election day bake sale. HUGE Thanks to all the bakers and volunteers who brought back this fun event for the first time in several years. It was great to see and talk to so many members of the community who were happy to support the school where they were voting! The beautiful baked goods that everyone donated brought a lot of smiles and happiness. Best of all we raised almost $1300 for the Families of RAUC activities this year!

June 24, 2022 A HUGE heartfelt thank you to everyone who volunteered to make the RAUC Block Party such a fun end of year party on Friday.  THANK YOU to everyone who pitched in to plan it, to run the dunk tank, to hand out 486 slushies, to take a gazillion photobooth shots, to engage the kids in art projects, to give them tattoos, to play games with them, to inspire them to sing and dance spontaneously,  TO FEED THEM, to pop 486 servings of popcorn in the hot sun, to clean up so fast afterward. To make them laugh and smile.  And a special thank you to whomever organized the rainbow with no rain. It was an amazing day. Thanks for helping achieve our goal of JOY! 

– Lilli

FRAUC met at Bergin Park at 8am Wednesday, 5/17/22 and covered a lot of ground…

FRAUC Membership. First, we emphasized that if you have a child at RAUC, then you are automatically a member! FRAUC is the organization of volunteer parents and caregivers. All are welcome at FRAUC meetings!

FRAUC Mission Statement. We reviewed the FRAUC Mission Statement. This spring we are living that statement by working cooperatively with RAUC to fund an array of fun events for students.

#RAUCBlockParty report from Lilli Smith. The planning for the Friday, June 24 event (rain date Tuesday June 28) is going very well! The timing and contracts with vendors have come together, and we have begun recruiting volunteers through a SignUpGenius (link available in weekly RAUC newsletter). We decided to distribute flyers to families about volunteering at this evening’s Unity Concert. Lilli will put a QR code to the signup on the flyer.

We will not have media releases (signed by students’ caregivers) specific to the Block Party, but we can send any photos of the event to Julia Ho, who can identify photos that are cleared by releases.

Meeting CHANGED: Meeting for volunteers is Monday evening, June 20, 8:30-9 pm. We also decided to hold a zoom meeting for Block Party volunteers, the week of the event, so they can see the layout of the field, where they will be and how they can help. For volunteers who cannot make the meeting, Lilli will communicate directly with them about their role.

Treasurer’s Check-in from Sean Peirce. Sean said that we will likely have in the neighborhood of $9,500 left to carry over to any summer needs, and to the 2022-2023 school year. This is close to our target of a $10K cushion.

We also learned that because of a discount from Revival Cafe for the Staff Appreciation lunch, there was a $365 surplus! FRAUC voted to make that surplus available to teachers by splitting it three ways to each grade-level team, in the form of gift cards to Pemberton Market. Team Leaders can use the $ to get lunch and snacks for the team and for meetings in the weeks ahead. Karen Soroca, the event organizer, will work with Deirdre to get that surplus to the teams.

Other Spring events and needs. Deirdre Logan is planning the 8th grade picnic for Saturday, June 18th. Details will be available in the RAUC newsletter.

We asked about any other needs the school might have and agreed to respond as we are able to anything that comes up.

2022-2023 School Year Planning–Activities and Volunteers. As outgoing Co-Chair, Deirdre Logan wrote up a great month-by-month timeline of typical FRAUC activities and tasks. It begins right out of the gate with the Welcome Back potluck the week before school, and fundraising planning for mid/late fall.

As to other key dates, typically we have them nailed down for school events in the summer, but due to the pandemic uncertainty, we may not know events until later. Either way, the timeline provides useful info for planning the budget, meeting agendas, and volunteer needs. The timeline can be found here.

Volunteers and leadership. FRAUC will also need volunteers to work on activities and to share leadership in the organization. This is a full list of the people resources FRAUC has put in place during past non-pandemic years:

• Two Co-Chairs (both Deirdre Logan and Tracy Walton will have stepped down at/by the June 16th meeting).
• Secretary. Lilli Smith is staying on as Secretary for the 2022-2023 year. This role includes updating the FRAUC website.
• Treasurer. Sean Peirce is staying on as Treasurer for the 2022-2023 year.
• Web/Technical Support. In the past two years, Aaron Nathanson has managed the creation of the new website, while contracting with a CRLS student for the development work. FRAUC will need to assess needs for development and technical support in the future, and whether that can be handled by the Secretary role.
• One or two Grade Level Liaisons. (This involves organizing one of three dances–which each grade hosts once per school year–and liaising with the grade level team for special events. Dance ticket revenue and concessions raise funds for FRAUC.)
• Fundraising coordinators/planning committee (Fundraising is especially important to plan beginning early in the fall if 8th grade DC trip resumes and funds are needed for deposits)
• Special Events Coordinators (Staff appreciation, Ask a 6th Grader, Block Party, etc.)
• DC Trip Captains to plan trip, work with vendors.

Looking ahead, it will be important to reflect on FRAUCs role, by-laws, mission, and funding projects, as well as how to encourage and increase caregiver involvement in the organization and in the school during the pandemic.

NEXT MEETING: Thursday, June 16, 8 am at Bergin Park (weather permitting). This will be the final meeting of the school year.

We love our RAUC Staff! On Wednesday, 5-11, an early release day, library tables held the weight of a large spread of to-go food for RAUC Staff Appreciation Day. Organized by RAUC caregivers, there were homemade dishes, platters of fruit, fancy desserts and beverages. Catered to-go bags were donated by Revival Cafe and purchased by RAUC caregivers. Cards, signs, and caregiver volunteers greeted RAUC staff as they went through the line.

Thank you to our staff for working so hard this year to support our students. Your skill, compassion, and care are evident in every interaction with students and families!

From Julia Ho, RAUC Family Partnership Coordinator:
Thank you FRAUC for helping fund materials for the Chinese Calligraphy and Painting club! Though students learn about various cultures and histories in the school social studies curriculum, this club offered a unique opportunity for students to deepen their understanding of one particular cultural art form through experiential learning. Students learned from an expert (and RAUC caregiver) in Chinese calligraphy and painting (who’s also a RAUC parent), and built their skills over the course of 8 weeks. It was an enriching experience and we hope to offer this club again in future cycles!

Sixth graders’ social justice picture books, created for young readers, were a huge success. FRAUC helped with funds for bookbinding. See photos of some of their work at the end of this post!

From Ms. Saillant, their Social Studies teacher:

Thank you FRAUC! It was a blast working with students in our Social Justice Picture Books lit block! They are super proud of publishing their first children’s book on an issue of justice they were passionate about. My goal is to bring this into the social studies classroom so all 6th graders will have an opportunity to publish a story.

This project helps enrich RAUC curricula in that it provides students with an opportunity to do interdisciplinary work (e.g. Social studies and English Language Arts) and apply skills they’re learning and specific content to things that they are personally passionate about. Literacy blocks are elective courses that fall outside the classroom budgets.

Altered Apparel is a popular after school club facilitated by Ms. Victoria Leggett. As part of our grants to teachers program, FRAUC funded fabric and other supplies for the club. Some of the work is displayed below!

Here’s what Ms. Leggett says about their creative work:

“[Altered Apparel provides] a way to explore their creativity in a new format while also reflecting on themselves to discover their personal styles and identity. Through exploring more folk art mediums they get to get in touch with the cultural and historical roots that our current methods derive from.

“I teach the students different skills to customize their clothes with their own two hands like embroidery, fabric painting, embellishing, and more. The main ideas behind it is to give students agency over their style to fit their identity, build accessible/affordable skills, and fight fast fashion.”