Carnival rides and games will cover the grounds of West Sedona School on Saturday, Oct. 25, from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.
The annual Wildcat Carnival, is traditionally the WSS Parent Teacher Association’s largest fundraiser of the year. It includes classic carnival rides and games including raffles and prizes, and food trucks.
“The radio station is going to be there,” PTA member and event organizer Garin Marschall said. “They come, they broadcast from the carnival and play music live on site.”
He said they’re always looking for volunteers to help out with the event, and it’s never too late to join.
“If anyone would like to volunteer, we’re also still looking for sponsorship partnerships,” PTA member and event organizer Erika Christensen said. “So if any local businesses or anyone wants to partner with us to sponsor the carnival, wehave lots of great ways to partner together and uplift their businesses while they’re supporting.”
Last year, Christensen and Marschall were asked to help put together the carnival a bit last minute because of some issues with the former organizers.
“We didn’t quite have enough time to do last year what we wished … we’d had more time to do,” Christensen said. “So this year, we’re like, ‘well, now that we have more lead time, we could get the balloon-animal man from Phoenix.’” Marschall and Christensen moved to Sedona about three years ago. Marschall got involved with the PTA almost immediately, and Christensen began helping out last year.
Marschall said one common misconception about the PTA is that it’s a just a fundraising organization.
“The district is struggling, like all are in the state, with funding,” he said. “So, while we do, in some cases, try to fill gaps, like if the school needs something, or teachers need something or classroom stuff, we do what we can there, but the PTA is really an advocacy organization, and so … I think now we’re trying to transition into thinking about how can we be inviting this community to advocate for public schools, for funding public schools.”
One of the best ways to do that, he said, is to get the community involved in events like the carnival. But it’s a tough time of year to do a fundraiser like this one; there are so many events throughout October and the fall — like Fest of Fall, WagFest and Halloween — that makes it hard to get families to come out.
“We do what we can to keep the cost to families down so that they can come and participate and have a fun day and not break the bank, while still trying to fundraise,” Marschall said. “That’s where the sponsors come in, because it allows us to make it a fundraising event, but have people still come without it, needing to make all the money at the door.”
For those wanting to do carnival rides and games, there’s a wristband available for $20, but the event is free entry, so families and community members can come hang out, buy food from the various food trucks and bid on raffle tickets.
“The raffle baskets are really cool because we basically have themes in the classrooms,” Marschall said. “Each classroom gets a theme like, you know, STEM and learning, or movie night or something, and then all of the families bring stuff in for the gift baskets, and then we wrap it up, and that’s what’s raffled off.”
Christensen said she envisions the carnival like it’s been in past years, but growing to offer more.
“I think there’ll just be more games than people are used to … to build out and use our space as much as possible,” she said. “We’re adding more games and, since we’re close to Halloween, we’re going to encourage kids to wear costumes if they’d like, costumes are welcome. We’ll have face-painting.”
To find out more about this year’s event, go to westsedonapta.com or to the PTA’s Facebook page.
