CPA Board Meeting, June 9th, 2011- Pam Gasper’s home

In Attendance – Tina Raghu, Pam Gaspers, Lisa Flynn, Ann Radcliffe, Michelle Toshima, Maya Shinn

Meeting started at 6:45 p.m.

President’s Report:

There will be no co-president this year. We will recruit a co-president in the spring for next year and then the new co-president can overlap with Tina for a year.

Summer play dates went well this year with good number of attendees of new and current families. Will keep it a low number of play dates again next year.

Web design looks great. Ann Radcliffe will keep improving and updating it for easier communication. She welcomes any input to make it better.

 

Reviewed CPA fundraising letter for the first Wednesday packet. Pam suggested looking into adding a graph that shows how the CPA budgets its expenditures.  The graph will show the percentage of how much we give to different categories (classroom support, additional teacher training, grants, social, administration). Tina will take this on and send around via email for input. Discussed a second letter to raise funds after WAETAG to let members know about the training we help fund.

Tina had a question from Ms Poly whether or not CPA will pay for the back to school swim night. The consensus was no; we will not fund the event.

The PTA is looking for volunteer for Back To School Night. Anyone who is interested will contact the PTA to volunteer.

Book Club. Mary Freitas suggested a book club. Tina will ask for more details when she meets with Mary. It was suggested that if we want to do this we need to find a volunteer to lead the group.

Coffee Chats. At this point we are not going to schedule any and will revisit at a later time.

The PTA is paying to attend a Law seminar and has invited CPA board members.  Tina will forward information on this when she gets it.

Summer BBQ Preparation:

Ann showed us her sign in sheet. We’re going to try to keep it simple. Michelle suggested that we have clipboards and ask people to sign up as we mingle. Tina will bring clipboards.

Lisa and Pam will go shopping Saturday morning. We discussed item quantities to be purchased based on the RSVP. We still need few items. Michelle will bring table for signing up. Need to purchase name tags and multi-colored Sharpies (Tina). Each Grade will have different color to make it easier to recognize.

Addressing the need of Events for Community Building.

Have a family game night – BINGO – at the beginning of school year and have teachers help out with the event.

Lisa volunteered to take on organizing class lists for each class. We decided that we would like to get information at Curriculum Night (9/22/11). The form will specifically ask if information can be shared with the class and then with the Challenge Program families.

Ann brought up a question as to how to increase our revenue through the Goodsearch. Concern was raised that not many families know about the program. Maybe increase ad/communication on this.

Treasurer’s Report:

The handover is done from Tracy to Maya. Maya will coordinate a date to add co-signers for checks. (Tina and Lisa?) Need to set a date for auditing before 1st General Meeting.

We need more information on WAETAG for our budgeting. Maya will find out how much the district plans to fund and how many teachers would like to attend the conference in Wenatchee. Michelle will check in with teachers at Brier Terrace. We plan to prioritize new teachers but hope that we’ll be able to send any teacher who wants to attend.

Meeting Dates to come:

We need 4 board meetings and 4 general meetings per year. We tentatively set up the next 2 meeting dates as follows:

• First General Meeting: Thursday, October 6^th 2011.

Will be discussing what CPA is and we’ll include BTMS

• 2^nd general meeting: Thursday, January 12^th, 2012.

In preparation for the Gifted Ed Day (January 27^th 2012).

The next 2 general meeting will be determined later.

The next board meeting in preparation for Gifted Ed Day will be on Thursday, November 17^th 2011. Place and time to be determined.

Bingo night in the fall as a second general meeting for community building was also rediscussed. We are waiting on the PTA calendar and once we see that we’ll see if can also schedule this meeting.

Meeting adjourned 8:10 p.m.

CPA Board Meeting, June 9th, 2011- Ginger Everhart’s home

In Attendance – Ginger Everhart, Sue Wilson-Schmitz, Tracy Hannuksela, Pam Gaspers, Tina Marohn, Tina Raghu, Jenny Cain, Maya Shinn, Ann Radcliffe

Calendar items:

Festival of the Famous tomorrow. We have three legislators attending. Ginger put in a facility use form, helpers are in place and we are setting up early. A posting went out this morning on the website.

6th grade tea is on the 15th. Tracy is expecting to hear from a few parents on helping to supplement the cost for the event. We already had a wonderful parent donate $125. Does CPA want to set up a pay pal account in the future for donations from parents for special events?

Mary Freitas wants to set up a luncheon with current board during the last week of school. The board members need to send their available dates to Ginger.

Summer Park dates: Nancy Gilbertson is ready to send out that information to new families.  Tina Raghu has stated that the input from new board is to reduce the number of park dates for the summer. Would like to have a banner or something for people to easily find the group, especially for the beach outing. Would like to do a Saturday morning park time to make it available to working parents and maybe 2 or 3 other park dates. The hope is that 3 or 4 board members can make it to each one. Tina Raghu suggested the following park play dates: 2nd Wednesday in July, last weekend of July, 2nd Wednesday in August, and the BBQ on August 28th. The plan is to have a flyer go out for the summer BBQ and summer park dates next week. Pam will handle this, work with Mary Freitas for approval and connect with Nancy Gilbertson to get it out to new parents.

Park suggestions:

• Hickman Park
• Edmonds City Park
• Edmonds Beach
• Logan Park – Brier

 

New Board agenda:

New board will set up a joint meeting with the PTA board.

CPA and PTA presidents will meet with Mary Freitas to set up key dates for the year. The new board has to come up with a calendar for the next school year soon.

Tina Raghu is searching for someone to replace the new position for co-president as Kate Shelby-Martin will not be able to fill the position. Pam has connected with Michelle Toshima and Kristen Merrill about the at-large position representing Brier Terrace Middle School families.

Summer BBQ –

• Ginger to email Pam and Tina her master list for the BBQ.
• Need to access CPA cupboard for BBQ supplies.

 

Treasurer’s Report (Tracy Hannuksela):

See attached sheet which includes current financials and budget, previous years actuals and budget and projected budget.

• We did well with the Spring fundraiser.
• Parent donation of $125 for 6th grade tea. If there is any money left over in the budget for the tea, Tracy will check with the donor to see if we can roll it over to next year.
• Received 2 checks for the festival of famous rentals.
• We recently agreed to cover 2 substitute teachers to cover interviewing for 2 new challenge teachers for next year.
• Grants are trickling in. Transportation reimbursement for Island Wood Summit will be coming from Kathleen Pratt soon.
• All the classroom support money has been spoken for.
• Need to budget more for summer BBQ with the inclusion of BTMS families.
• $39. 06 donated per student this year
• This year we will have an $8000 carryover. We are budgeting for a $4000 carryover for the next fiscal year.

Next year’s proposed budget highlights…

• Fundraising – Good search/shop $100
• Did not budget again for Pacific Science Center
• 60% of what we budget is used for grants, so there’s no plan to increase that
• Bumped up Summer BBQ $550

Gifted Education Day – any scholarship CPA pays toward the field trip cost for the the 4th graders is considered a grant. We need to find out if GED (Friday, January 27, 2012) lands on a non-school day next year. We won’t know until the district submits their 2011/2012 calendar.

WAETAG -Tracy is projecting $250 per teacher for registration, as we do not know the actual cost yet. Since it is in Wenatchee this year, teachers may need substitutes for that Friday. CPA cannot afford to cover every teacher next year. We are waiting for Nancy Gilbert to let us know if the district can cover the registration cost. One thought was to cover some of teachers, based on need, and Mary thought that was reasonable. Assuming the district doesn’t pay for anything, Tracy estimated each teacher would receive $75 for food stipend, $250 hotel (2 nights), $186 per substitute.

Tracy to check with Mary Freitas on allocation of speaker money for next year. Does Mary want it for a speaker next year, or to cover substitutes for their curriculum planning day, or  can some of the money be used for WAETAG?

 

*CPA board voted on budget for 2011/2012 – Pam Gaspers motioned, and Jenny Cain seconded, all members unanimously in favor. Budget passed.

Audit committee:  Maya Shinn and Pam Gaspers will perform an audit before the 1st general meeting. Tracy will close the books in July.

 

Presidents’ Report:

Meeting with Mary

• Summer math
• Conditional acceptance
• Bylaws
• Meeting protocols

Meeting with Tony

• conditional status
• meeting protocol

District Hi-Cap task force – Their last meeting was canceled. They are still looking at IB and are on board with our revised bylaws.

Lake Steven’s Parent Group – Sue met with this group and encouraged them to focus on building a strong supportive community before approaching their district. They gave Sue a tip on getting grants and that may help to bring back our Pacific Science Center visiting scientists.

Sue sent out thank you notes to all the school board members, thanking them for their support for our students as well as our board.

State budget has applied a blanket 1.9% cut in K-12 teacher salaries and 3% cut in K-12 administrator salaries. We are waiting to find out what that means for our district, as teacher contracted salaries were presumably locked-in with the last contract ratification in August of this year.  There are 290 students coming into challenge next year. This year we had 240. We will not be getting additional challenge teachers.

Sue put together a presidents’ letter that sums up what the CPA board accomplished this year. Created to help as a guide for the incoming CPA board.

Final bylaws were handed over to the secretary for keeping in the records.

CPA is a non-profit association with the state and is not listed as a corporation.

 

New business:

Communication strategies for getting BTMS parents connected into CPA.

• Flyers are going out with last Wednesday packets to 6th grade students
• Sue is checking in with Kevin to see what can be shared with students/families at BTMS
• We need a link to the CPA website from Brier Terrace school website
• Send letter along with picnic flyer to Nancy Gilberston to introduce the changes to include BTMS

Should CPA do something special for the retiring challenge teachers? Check in with Mary Freitas. Maybe something can be placed on the bulletin board.

Summer volunteer math tutoring program – Mary Freitas is working with Jackie McDonald (ESD math director) on the best way to communicate with new parents about the math curriculum website to help new students get up to speed before entering the challenge program. Further discussion is needed about how best CPA can facilitate helping families moving into the program to get caught up on math before school starts each year.

 

Meeting adjourned 8:20 p.m.

 

Official transition to the new board members begins.