Before School Care: Committee coordinates the before school care program, which is offered to help working parents of Walden students. Drop-in students can also be accommodated. It provides a safe environment for children before school. Information is distributed to families in the fall. Chair works closely with the Before School Care teachers/staff. Click here for a Before School Care registration form.

Family Fun Night:  This committee will organize a fun evening of bingo and/or other activities for Walden families.  They will coordinate all aspects of the evening including sales, publicity, games, prizes, food service, and volunteers.  The teacher raffle will also be included.

Blizzard Committee:   Dairy Queen Blizzards will be available after the evening music programs.  This committee handles all forms and payments, as well as coordinating orders with Dairy Queen and each class’s representative for distributing the orders. 

Book Fair: This committee coordinates this ever-popular and super-successful fundraiser held at Walden during the winter months. Books, offered through Anderson Books, are featured during this multiday event.

Box Tops for Education: This fundraiser is a no-brainer as it allows parents to contribute to our school by buying products they normally purchase for their families. Simply watch for the Box Tops for Education labels on many name-brand grocery store products, cut out the label and send it to school. We earn money for every label collected.

Bus: This committee coordinates bus routes with the school, bus company and families and helps to ensure the efficiency and safety of the buses and the routes. Work begins in the spring and continues through early fall.

Celebrating Differences Program: Whether provided throughout the school year, or during one entire week, the Celebrating Differences Program is geared toward teaching our children about patience, tolerance and acceptance for the differently-abled. We are looking for a committee volunteer for each grade level.

Cultural Arts: Three to four times a year, the PTO sponsors enrichment programs/assemblies for the entire student body. These creative presentations are of an educational nature and are always very entertaining. Volunteers attend “Showcase” in late summer, early fall at a local community college to “pick” and “book” the programs that they feel would be most interesting.

District 109 Foundation Representative:  The representative meets once a month with the foundation to plan the foundation’s fundraisers and scholarship program and reports back to the PTO when needed.

Enrichment & Lunch Bunch: After School Enrichment classes are offered to all Walden students after school and at lunch for kindergartners. Three sessions are held throughout the year and coordination of this program involves hiring teachers, seeking out programming, registering students and distributing information to families. To equally distribute workloads, this committee will have as many as five chairs. Get together with friends and chair this as a group!

Environmental Awareness: Volunteers plan activities structured to teach our children to be environmentally responsible. Ongoing activities include promoting recycling as well as an “Earth Week Challenge” in April.

Skate Night:  This committee will organize an evening activity away from the school for Walden families.  A Family Skate Night has already been scheduled for October.  Other ideas include a Movie Night or Bowling Night for January.  Committee can be divided among the different events.

Field Days: This committee and our fantastic gym teacher, Mr. DeRoose, plan and promote a day of games and activities for our children to support fitness, cooperation, team spirit and school pride.

Friday Flyer: The Friday Flyer is the primary means of communication between our school, the district and home.  PTO happenings are always covered in this weekly document.  This volunteer collects, organizes, and delivers the Flyers via email or on the District 109 Website..

Hospitality/Baking Committee: This committee plans and organizes the Kindergarten Orientation, Teacher/PTO Winter Holiday Luncheon, and June Teacher Luncheon.  The baking committee provides desserts for a variety of events throughout the year.

Ice Cream Social: This kindergarten hosted school year kick off offers Walden families the opportunity to meet new teachers and friends.  They will coordinate food, entertainment and “scoopers” and handle the evening from start to finish.

Kids Craft: This committee will coordinate a craft as well as process and distribute the orders.  All the work for this committee will take place in the spring.  Usually done with Mother’s Day in mind.

Kindergarten: This committee helps the incoming Kindergarten parents make the transition to Walden a little easier. The committee works toward educating, introducing and explaining Walden and it’s happenings at a summer outing.

Library Media Center (LMC): This committee works with the LMC director and obtains volunteers to assist the LMC staff (these volunteers are coordinated with their child’s class time at the LMC). This committee also administers the “Celebration Books Program” in which families donate books to the LMC in honor of family and friends.

Membership: This committee collects, organizes and verifies all school and district information, class lists and calendar listings and publishes it all in the Walden World Directory. They collect money and membership forms and distribute directories. All the work for this committee takes place in the summer and the early fall.

Nominating Committee:  The nominating committee is responsible for dispersing and collecting nomination forms for the PTO Executive Board. The committee meets a few times to collate the forms, and get acceptances from the nominated people.

Pancake Breakfast:  Volunteers plan and provide an annual “early bird” pancake breakfast for Walden families with the help of teacher cooks and volunteers.

Parent Networking:  This committee will set up periodical meetings at their grade level to discuss any issues that a particular grade might be having or to just get together with moms who are dealing with the same grade level students.

Philanthropy: Responsibilities include choosing and coordinating philanthropic activities in which the student body can participate. An example is collecting used backpacks and end of the year school supplies to give to a needy school.

Picture Day: This committee works with the school photography company to  coordinate picture day.

Plant Sale: The plant sale is a fund raising effort, which offers a wide assortment of flowering annuals, perennials, hanging plants and vegetables in the spring. This involves working with a greenhouse; processing orders and coordinating drop off and pick up of plants.

Publicity:  This committee helps publicize school events through  local media sources.

Room Parents: This committee coordinates room parents for every classroom in the school.  Besides helping teachers, and planning holiday parties, room parents are also responsible for coordinating teacher gifts.

Science Night:  Science Night is an evening of fun "hands-on" science activities for Walden students along with a display of student created inventions called  "Invention Convention". The committee will decide and create (or gather) science activities for a variety of science stations to be set up in the MPR or gym the night of the event.

School Board Liaison: The Walden representative attends the twice-monthly District 109 Board of Education Meetings and reports the District 109 News at Walden PTO Monthly meetings.

School Supplies:  These chairpersons provide a great service to the Walden School community by providing school supplies “in a box” delivered directly to your child on the first day of school.  Activities include supplying and collecting forms and payments at the close of each school year and coordinating delivery of supplies to students in their individual classrooms prior to the start of each school year.

Six Hour Reading Club:  This program challenges students to do six hours of reading to win free passes to Great America.  Chair coordinates the distribution and collection of applications and tickets.

Special Lunch: Lunches are brought in from local restaurants three times per week, all year long. This team of volunteers coordinates with venders, processes the orders and provides well-balanced lunches to the students. Walden receives a donation for every lunch purchased. Volunteers will help serve lunch to the students. For more information on Special Lunch, click here.

Technology: This committee will work with the Walden School Technology Committee, our Computer lab teacher, Mrs. Merrill, and the District to handle technology issues.  There is approximately 1 work night a month, where it committee fixes, upgrades and keeps the computers in working order.  If you are technically astute, this is for you.

Variety Show:  This committee will work with children of all grade levels to coordinate a show to be performed for their family and friends.  It involves coordinating auditions, the chosen acts, music, and rehearsals.  Everything needed for a Broadway show.

Walden Bucks:  This is an extremely successful fundraiser for Walden.  Gift Cards are bought through Walden for Starbucks, Dominick’s, Jewel, Sunset and Whole Foods.  The committee gathers the orders, places them, and distributes them once a month to the families who ordered them.  Just think, the profits help Walden and you need groceries!!

Walden Wear:  Show your school spirit by volunteering to chair this committee.  Before school begins, the committee will decide on what clothing items to feature, show them at various school functions and coordinate sales and delivery of items to Walden Families.

Walden Website: This committee will update the website on a regular basis. Training on website Creation and maintenance is offered to the committee through the district.

Walden Wrap: One of our most successful fundraisers, Walden Wrap occurs in September and October and features wrapping paper and gift items for our Walden families and friends. The committee handles all forms and payments, and sorts the purchases for easy pick-up prior to the winter holidays.