The Miner PTO wishes to express our gratitude to our partner Playworks and their incredible crew of volunteers who came to Miner on Saturday, October 21, to spruce up our stairwells and help organize our Library and second-floor book room. It certainly means a lot to us at Miner to have such caring members of the community share their time and energy to help improve Miner for the benefit of our students, teachers, staff, and families! Thank you!

We look forward to Playworks starting with us in December to establish a program designed to improve the health and well-being of our students by increasing opportunities for physical activity and safe, meaningful play. We are so excited that Playworks has partnered with Miner to provide this type of high quality, multi-faceted program!

Miner Elementary School is a proud recipient of a $1000 Parents for Healthy Kids grant made possible through Action for Healthy Kids® (AFHK) and funding from ALDI. The grant will help expand student access to physical activity and healthy foods in school, improve knowledge and behaviors around physical activity and healthy eating, and provide funding and support to parent groups as they work to engage parents and families in these efforts both at school and at home.  

Miner will use its grant to fund:

• The purchase of new and replacement equipment for Physical Education classes
• The establishment of a new partnership with Playworks to improve the health and well-being of Miner’s students by increasing opportunities for physical activity and safe, meaningful play
• The school’s involvement in Every Kid Healthy Week in April, 2018

Special thanks go out to Lindsey Jones-Renaud, Chair of the PTO's Fundraising & Grants Committee, for leading development of Miner's grant application!
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Miner is one of 150 schools receiving an ALDI-funded grant along with technical support to implement its grant utilizing AFHK’s Game On program in the 2017-2018 school year. For a complete list of schools funded by ALDI in the 2017-2018 school year, visit ActionforHealthyKids.org/ALDI. Parents are also encouraged to visit ParentsforHealthyKids.org, a new website designed to support parents in creating healthier schools and part of the Parents for Healthy Kids national initiative. 

About Action for Healthy Kids®
Action for Healthy Kids® is a nationwide grassroots network supporting school-based healthy eating and physical activity improvements that increase academic success. With funding opportunities, expert technical assistance and our flagship program, Game On, we mobilize schools, administrators and parents to develop healthy school environments for children. To learn more about the ways our 90,000+ volunteer network is helping to make Every Kid Healthy™, visit us at ActionforHealthyKids.org, on Facebook (facebook.com/act4healthykids) and on Twitter (twitter.com/Act4HlthyKids).

We couldn't have asked for a more perfect fall day to celebrate International Walk to School Day yesterday! The event organizers from the Capitol Hill Public School Parent Organization (CHPSPO, https://chpspo.org/) did an amazing job of planning, and it really showed with an all-star roster of VIP speakers and other special guests (including DC Water's Wendy the Water Drop, JO Wilson cheerleaders, and Eastern High Marching Band).

The Miner delegation was out in full force, with an amazing complement of teachers, staff, parents, and students who assembled for the formal event in Lincoln Park, followed by a block-long "parade" up Tennessee Avenue to the school. Thank you to everyone who came out and really demonstrated to our Capitol Hill neighbors and city leaders that the Miner family is strong and proud!

We'd also like to thank Mayor Bowser and Deputy Mayor for Education Niles for joining us on our walk to Miner and for the opportunity to tell them the good news about our school. We're so glad they were able come inside for a few minutes to say good morning to our students.

Finally and most importantly, the PTO wishes to say a special "Thank You!" to Katy Thomas, the PTO's Civic Liaison, for coordinating Miner's participation in the event, and to our incredible art teacher, Ms. Davis, for creating the wonderful signs our delegation waved with pride.

Some photos from the event are included below. The PTO will work with the Mayor's office to obtain the official photos from the event, so stay tuned!

The Miner PTO was pleased to announce last Friday, September 29, that Miner had been awarded a two-year, $35,000 grant from the Office of the State Superintendent of Education (OSSE) to continue building, strengthening, and growing our garden program (see announcement here: http://www.minerelementary.org/news--announcements/something-exciting-is-growing-at-miner-elementary).

However, this incredible opportunity for the future wouldn’t have been possible without a lot of hard work and dedication to develop, write, and submit the grant application to OSSE this past summer. So a huge THANK YOU goes out to Lindsey Jones-Renaud, the chair of the PTO's Fundraising & Grants Committee, and Victoria Mirowski of Cultivate the City, who lead the effort to develop the grant application on behalf of Miner. The school garden program they designed ensures that Miner will fulfill the grant requirements to broaden and integrate garden, nutrition, and STEM-related instruction throughout Miner.

The Miner community greatly appreciates the work of Lindsey, Victoria, and all who helped bring this grant to Miner!