Our community had a very successful year of fundraising, events, and programs offered. It is all thanks to the support of you, the parents, along with the teachers, and OHS staff that helped make it all happen! Notably this year, due to successful fundraising from our events including Harvest Faire, Harvest Faire Raffle, the Variety Show and the Sweetheart Dance, we are able to use the surplus funds to purchase a gaga pit for our school playground. We also have plans to purchase some items for the Teacher’s Lounge, amongst other things for our children.
As we crafted the 2025-2026 budget, we reflected on our fundraising this year, and goals for next year. Many of our goals remain the same: to continue to fund amazing programs for our children and community. importance of funding our many programs, while being mindful of keeping our event and ticket prices low for our families. We also aim to prioritize ways in which we can be even more expense-conscious next year, while keeping costs low, so more funds can go back to the community. For all the money raised, we aim to distribute the funds back to the community in ways that will touch as many children as possible. For example, this year, we funded two Author visits (Jerry Palotta who writes the series Who Would Win..; and Chris Grabenstein who writes the Limoncello series); Magic Morgan & Liliana, a deaf magician who focuses on themes of inclusion and accessibility; and science programming from the Sacred Heart University Discovery Science Center, and much more.
In the proposed 2025-2026 budget, one notable shift is that we are trying to put more money back into the Student Activity Fund which predominantly funds field trips. We have received feedback from OHS parents that this is much desired by our community and we want to try to make that happen! To accomodate this shift, we needed to make some small adjustments to our fundraising goals, however, these updated targets are still significantly less than what the committees raised this year, so we believe these goals are attainable.
So please review this budget, there’s lots of great things on the horizon! We hope to see you on Thursday, June 5th at 9:15am to celebrate the end of the year and cast your vote.
