Our sweet little school has done SO WELL for a couple years now and we are just so proud. When we found out that we received top testing gains in the parish and that our teachers would each receive $1500-we wanted to keep that momentum going! So, Amy and I got to work brainstorming! When I think celebration I think balloons and confetti! I really wanted a balloon drop and confetti cannons so I got on the trusty Amazon and ordered them right up! I was talking to the VP of PTA, Kristin and she came up with Hats off to Fairfield as the theme! This allowed us to have everyone wear a hat to school for the event!
I brought all of our ideas to Mrs. Graham and she loved everything! And my ideas can be pretty harebrained, but she went with it! I contacted all of the media outlets in town, but the only one who responded after numerous calls and email was KSLA! I contacted local key players like the mayor and Caddo parish superintendent and asked them to speak. When they said YES, I about fell out! And of course, Senator Peacock, a Fairfield dad spoke, too.
I had no idea how we would blow up 1500 balloons, so I bagged them up in bags of 20 and asked people to blow them up. It went so fast and we had them all blown up in no time! A few moms including Catherine came to help stuff the balloon nets! Our next problem was how we were going to hang the dang nets. Thankfully Mr. Winn called in a favor and had scaffolding brought to the school and these lovely gentlemen hung them for us!
As we were putting up the nets-we could not figure out how to get the balloons to come out. I called the manufacturer and he said we had to do a "test pull." I was worried about that because we had already hung the balloons. He told me the difference in a test pull and a test drop. So I called Kristin and we went up to school to do the test pull. Boy am I glad we did!!! There is no amount of force that would have pulled those things down without us testing it first! We had to take tape off and take a slip knot out and it actually worked!!! And it actually turned out to be pretty easy to operate once we figured it out!
 |
| I was like a 6 year old watching these balloons go up! All the kids were THRILLED! |
We celebrated so many things at the celebration! Our teachers have been killing it with local, state, and national awards and we were so proud! I announced our STATE PTA Educator of Distinction and that we are a National PTA School of Excellence. And I introduced the Mayor who was the principal at the middle school while I attended! Amy helped me with my speech-thank God for that!
We also celebrated the day with a luncheon for the teachers and staff. Well that didn't go over so well. I ordered the lunch for 35 people, but I told the guys who hung the balloons to stop by for lunch. Well apparently they brought more than the 3 who hung the balloons so we didn't have enough food! Thankfully Kristin went to Tazikis and served our wonderful enrichment teachers. How embarrassing!
 |
| Henry's class happened to be right by the stage so I snapped this! |
 |
| Superintendent, PTA Prez, Mayor, Principal, Senator, and Director I feel so cool to stand with these peeps! |
 |
| The whole school and I used this as an opportunity to ask the superintendent for a multipurpose building! |
 |
| Hats off to Fairfield! Anytime someone would say that they would all take off their hats! |
 |
| Mayor Tyler |
After all of the little speeches and congratulatory comments and the Mayors' proclamation, Mrs. Graham called for celebration! When she said celebrate, our music teacher played "Celebrate Good Times" and our volunteers (Neil included) pulled the strings for the balloon nets and shot the confetti cannons! I sat on that stage in awe that it all actually worked!
 |
| It worked!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! |
Everyone worked so hard to make this day great! We got Red River Bank to donate ice cream for all the kids and asked parents to donate toppings. They went outside for an ice cream social recess after the event! They got to celebrate even more by having 2 free dress days, snacks at recess on Thursday, and Popsicles at recess on Friday!
We are ranked #5 in the state on
school digger website. Our test scores went up 7 points in 1 year. This is simply impressive because at a magnet school, our kids are already performing at a higher level and what's even more impressive is lots of our siblings only had to score in the 50th percentile to get in whereas other schools they had to make a 70 to get in. We are so proud!
And Whew! I am exhausted!!!!
