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President’s To Do List

December 10, 2009

Action Items:

  1. Community Values – Input is needed back prior to the December break. It is very important that we have done our due diligence to reach the community across the district (north, south, and central) and across the grade levels (K-12).
    First    , if you have a meeting left this year please talk to your membership about this and gather immediate feedback.
    Second    , advertise in any communications that you have between now and the end of the year.
    Third    , send a direct ask to your PTA leadership (Board and committee chairs).
    Finally, gather all the input and send to Heather Gillette.

    Please feel free to edit: (this is slightly different from the November example)
     

Community Values – we need to hear from you now!

If you were at the bargaining table, what would you say? Our community has an unprecedented opportunity to talk to the District and the teacher’s union about what we value most for our students. As with the last contract, the bargaining team has granted the Issaquah PTSA Council the opportunity to present a “community values” paper to them during the pre-bargaining phase. As many issues, such as the school calendar, parent-teacher conferences, gradebook system inputs, and teacher training opportunities, are decided through the contract bargaining process, we believe it is important that the voice of our students and parents is heard in the hopes that the final contract will reflect the values that are most important to our children and families.

The Issaquah PTSA Council is working with our local school PTSAs to gather input from our ISD families. What is most important to you and your children in terms of the education they receive in our district? What do you value most about the instruction time your children spend in our schools? What would you change? What would you like to see more of? Less of? Please email your thoughts – no particular format required – to (name, email of your PTSA president) no later than Friday, December 18th. Questions? Contact (name, email of your PTSA president).

  1. Insurance Forms – AIM may send you a hard copy, an email or you may download the certificate from their site. When you have it please pass a copy along to Debbie Sexton  for District facility use.
  2. Olympian Coalition – You are invited to observe our legislative forum on December 14, 7pm at Suzanne Weaver’s home (3749 234th Ave SE, Sammamish).
  3. Focus Day – Register online.
  4. Outreach – send comments to Kimberly Montague.
  5. School Board Linkage Meetings – we still need a school to volunteer to host a community linkage meeting in the Central area and in the North area sometime before the end of the school year. If you are interested please contact Heather  and I’ll get you hooked up with Suzanne to work out calendars.

Information Items:

  1. Reflections – Council reflections reception is on January 6, 7pm at PCFC. If you are available to help set up please come at 4:30pm.  Questions? Connie Rawson or Beth Koontz.
  2. Honor Unit Award and Communication Award - can be found on the State PTA website, under Leadership Resources (username: PTAmember, password: leader), click on Awards and it is towards the bottom of the page. You will find the application form and a judging sheet which gives you inside into how the submissions are reviewed.
  3. Toy Collection – Reminder that the Angel Network will be collecting toys at the Pickering Barn this Sunday, December 13.
  4. Telemarketing Scam – The actual name of the company is Dream Scholars but do not use that name directly as no one wants a libel suit brought against them. You may have noticed that the District e-news from yesterday, Dec. 10 included the sound byte that Skyline PTSA wrote and you can use it too as just a general reminder to parents to be careful.
  5. Nominating Training – January 28, 10-12pm at the ISD Admin Building. There are Council guidelines  for your reference as well.
  6. School Grant or ASB questions – contact Kim Allie, District Accountant at 837- 7013 or alliek@issaquah.wednet.edu if you have questions about giving grants to your school or working with the ASB.
  7. Teacher Contract – Here is the link  for your information.
  8. Art Docent Link – Here is the link to the Art Docent program.
  9. Art Docent chair meeting – Material information with new eco-friendly guidelines on Jan. 11. Vicki Hoffman with questions.
  10. Issaquah Connect – check it out  Issaquah Connect. To contact Sara Niegowski, Executive Director of Communication: 837 -7004, niegowskis@issaquah.wednet.edu.

New Items:

  1. January General Membership Meeting – We are still looking for a venue for this meeting. Please look closely when the meeting reminder comes out in January so you will know where to go. 
  2. PTA Men Essay – This contest is open to all students K-12. The deadline is February 1, 2010. More information can be found on the Washington State PTA website.
  3. National Advocacy – The Washington State PTA has posted a PTA Takes Action Challenge Toolkit for local leaders to participate in this challenge. Even if you start with just our Board of Directors trying it out it would be a help. Remember I reported that it was super easy and automated so it takes less than a minute to contact your representatives. If you don’t want to read all the instructions but just want to give it a try yourself you can sign up at: http://www.pta.org/takesaction/. Here is an excerpt from a letter from the National PTA President:

    To increase PTA’s voice on Capitol Hill, we challenge all PTA members to join the PTA Takes Action Network and respond to every action alert by reaching out to their members of Congress. The state with the highest increase in number of PTA Takes Action Network members and response rates to action alerts between now and May 15, 2010, will be named the National PTA Takes Action Challenge Champion and recognized at the National PTA Convention in Memphis, Tennessee, June 10–13, 2010.

Best Practice Moment:

Don’t forget to get that Nominating Committee elected and trained. A Council led Nominating Committee training will be on Monday, January 28, 2010, from 10-12pm at the Issaquah School District Admin building.