At 6 p.m., 500 people enter campus. An hour later, a car is auctioned off.
The Celebrate Community Event is the Parents’ association’s (PA)most significant community event.
Headlined by a silent auction and raffle tickets for a new car, the Celebrate event aims to provide a truly fun and relaxing experience for parents and teachers to come together as a community and bond over the school. The event is the culmination of effort from the PA and the chairs of the event, Chris Kennington and Desiree Rogers, who have worked tirelessly since September to begin planning the event.
The first step of the event is to create a theme to base the food, music and decorations on. Every year has a unique theme, and it is critical to the overall success of the event. This year’s was “The Pride of Texas.”
“We want to emphasize what a wonderful school St. Mark’s is and what it means to the Texas community at large and specifically Dallas,” Kennington said. “(The theme) kind of just came to us because lions live in prides, and we always talk about the pride, the den, the paws and everything lion related and it just kind of clicked, lions the pride of Texas.”
However, the theme was not only chosen to signify the school’s value to Texas but also to showcase the best of Texas to the guests of the event. With so many people moving to Texas in recent years, Kennington felt that this was the right decision.
“We wanted to make it more like our community event,” Kennington said. “We all come from different places, different schools, different states, and different countries. But now, we’re all here and (Dallas) is our home and what we are about, and so we’re going to have a really good backyard barbeque to celebrate.”
While the theme is crucial to the event, the main attraction of the event is the silent auction. Parents and donors of the school often provide luxury items and teachers generously donate their own time for events that parents of the school can purchase for their kids.
“We have a suite for a home football game for the Dallas Cowboys, a Mavericks suite to watch the Mavericks play, and we also have Mavericks floor seats that are available,” Kennington said. “A lot of times a parent sees a favorite teacher associated with an auction item, and that encourages them to bid on that item.”
Another highlight of the night is the car raffle. Each year a brand new car is parked near the entrance of campus prior to the event, and the winner of the car gets decided on the night of the event.
“Sewell automotive has generously donated a car for us to raffle off and so they have done this every year for us, which is so so nice,” PA president Cindy Hanson said. “It’s always really fun to see who wins it and you always get excited for that person when they win the drawing.”
This year, the whole premise of the event is to have fun and a good time.
“I think it’s gotten a little more casual because you know, spring is very busy,” Hanson said. “You just come by, enjoy the band, dance, drink and have fun, and it’s not just this huge commitment, like it was in prior years so it’s casual.”
The Celebrate Community Event is easily the biggest and most planned out event of the year, and that isn’t all the PA plans out.
Since the beginning of the school year, the PA is active and ready to collaborate with others on campus. Hanson feels that with such a board of 112 parents, the PA is able to equally represent each facet of the community.
“We work with the administration and division heads for planning purposes throughout the year,” Hanson said. “We meet with them and grade representatives once a month to share and receive information. We also work with the Student Council which is a very collaborative relationship. We help out for homecoming, Upper School spirit parties, Fan Blizzard, Spring Fever, and other events.”
The PA also organizes a lot more events as well, so preparing and organizing these events earlier on is imperative.
“It starts more in the spring, We don’t even wait till summer. Mrs. Steinbruck is already up there with me right now,” Hanson said. “So after spring break from now to the end of the school year, they’re already gearing up planning for next year’s activities.
The PA, however, doesn’t get as much recognition for a lot of the things they do.
“A lot of PA volunteers spend countless hours of behind the scenes work that people might not necessarily see,” Hanson said. “But I think they really help with the culture of the school and feeling welcome.”
