CPA General Meeting, 6:30 p.m. 3/3/11 – Terrace Park Commons
In Attendance: Ginger Everhart, Sue Wilson-Schmitz, Pam Gaspers, Tracy Hannuksela, Tina Marohn, Mary Freitas, board nominees Jenny Cain and Greg Radcliff, and 11 parents
Introductions
Approved the general meeting minutes from 12/01/10
Principal’s Report (Mary Freitas):
Mary thanked parents for coming to Olympia for Gifted Education Day. She encouraged parents to continue to talk to legislators. The Coalition for Gifted Education is still helping to get the word out and share talking points with families.
She also thanked everyone for their overall support for the school. Mary is beginning plans for next year and appreciates all the help the volunteers put in to make all our school events happen.
Classified staff week is coming up and is a good opportunity to show appreciation for them.
She also shared her appreciation for those coming on to the new board for next year.
Treasurer’s Report (Tracy Hannuksela):
Budget – we have received a few more fund drive donations with a total of $8,800 so far and we are close to $10,000 goal. Two matching fund checks came in the last couple of weeks as well.
Goodshop/goodsearch – annual check $94. CPA to send out an email about Goodshop/Goodsearch to families to encourage usage.
We broke even on the cost of Gifted Education Day with the sale of our t-shirts.
We are still receiving teacher reimbursements for WAETAG. (It’s in Wenatchee next year and the district may not cover registration or substitutes for the event and we may need to budget accordingly.)
Professional development money is going toward aligning curriculum this year instead of a speaker. The goal is for a more seamless transition between grades and from elementary school to middle school. The teachers are also using professional development time for working on this alignment.
Grant money – more requests are coming in.
Our current framework for deciding what gets funded has been whether this is something needed to supplement or add to enrichment needs in class or an educational field trip. Our criteria may not be as broad as our teachers need. We are going to try to better define what meets the requirements for grant requests. CPA board will flush this out in our next board meeting.
Mary has been encouraging teachers to write a joint grant covering a social studies curriculum. Mrs. Kutrich is part of a nationwide task force for social studies and has recently put in a grant request for world atlases.
We are all aware there are different types of curriculum needed for each grade level and grant requests will reflect this.
Kari Potter- recommend we set a deadline for grants to look at all grants at once, to make a decision by reviewing all of them, instead of first come, first serve. Tracy has requested in advance at least some ideas to know what may be coming.
Grant money does carry over for next year.
Classroom support – each teacher gets $300 to supplement curriculum. More receipts are coming in and it is expected the money will be gone by end of year.
Next year we are going to support the Coalition by contributing $150 toward the cleaning fee for the Columbia Room on Gifted Education Day.
Vice President’s Report (Pam Gaspers):
Pam made a note about Science Fair happening on Thursday of next week. She is looking for volunteer scientists to talk to students one on one in the morning.
Festival of the Famous – June 10th, 3rd/4th grade activity and CPA is hosting a community fundraiser/building event. We are collecting costumes from older kids and renting them out to younger kids. Rentals are scheduled for May 5th at our next general meeting and then will be scheduled during recess. Donations will be based on the honor system for each costume.
Great time in Olympia! We are looking at doing more advocacy on the district level. We are expecting some cuts this year, WAETAG. There are school board meetings twice a month and we are looking for other parent volunteers to attend these meetings. We encourage parents to go and speak about how valuable the program is.
(Mary Freitas) This coming Tuesday’s school board meeting we have some of our own students speaking and some from the middle school.
(Sue Wilson-Schmitz) The Highly Capable Task Force is working on ways to better communicate with parents and students about all the options their highly capable students have for high school in this district. For example, IB and AP are both services that the district pays for from their Highly Capable funds but Running Start is another popular option utilized by some Hi Cap students. Each program suits different types of learners and parents and students need to have this information early in order to make the best personal choices.
Beyond Challenge night was one way to try to get that communication out. (Maybe CPA adds in someone to speak about running start program as well). Help give parents and students better idea of the choices available.
Presidents’ Reports (Ginger Everhart & Sue Wilson-Schmitz)
Gifted Education Day:
One of our most successful Gifted Education Days. We were able to meet with 10 of the 11 legislators we had scheduled!
Over 150 people
Dr. Tony Byrd joined us
4th grade field trip was a success and may continue next year
Food was a success
CPA Recognized people at the meeting that helped out for the day – Audrey Hamlin-Burns, Jim Burns, Michelle Toshima, Kristin Merrill (Secretary of State tours!), Bert Flynn and Bob Riner – for photography and photo banner!
Continued Advocacy Points:
Donna Christianson has received feedback from legislators and there are still big misconceptions on what gifted is and what the needs are.
One major problem is being able to identify gifted kids – for which state funding is critical.
Statistics are being gathered regarding gifted student incarceration rates, drop-out rates, and the high percentages of learning disabilities that put this population in the “high risk” category.
Tony Byrd and Sue have reached out to Senator McAuliffe about reviewing the materials the Highly Capable Working Group’s research provided on the identification and needs of gifted children.
Encourage parents and kids to keep the letters coming. Make them short with clear bullet points, non-offensive, and do not compare other programs against gifted education.
Looking for way to include the business community to help get word out.
Legislators on Face Book and they do gauge what people are feeling by the comments they read.
There is information on our website from the Coalition on what exactly our focus can be going forward and that includes talking points with the legislators.
We’d like a rep from each of the four towns that encompass the Hi Cap program to write op-ed letters for the local papers. Ginger has written a press release for the local papers, including The Herald.
Other items:
We have two beautiful copies of the group photo on front steps of the capital on GED and 55 foot banner. We need ideas for best ways to utilize these. Bob Riner says he can supply them in digital format for us as well.
Next year Gifted Education Day is proposed for January 27th.
Nominees for 2011-2012 Board of Directors:
Co -Presidents: Tina Raghu & Kate Shelby-Martin
Co-Vice Presidents: Lisa Flynn & Pamela Gaspers
Co-Secretaries: Jenny Cain, Ann & Greg Radcliffe (Website and electronic communications)
Treasurer – Maya Shinn
Kari Potter moved and Amy Faris seconded the motion to elect the slate of officers as presented for the 2011-2012 Board of Directors for Challenge Parents Association. Motion carried by unanimous vote of members in attendance.
The future for CPA:
Ginger – Our current bylaws say we support our 7th & 8th grade students even though they are now housed at the Brier Terrace Middle School Hi-Cap program. We are looking to expand CPA to include families at Brier Terrace Middle School Program. We will need to rewrite the bylaws and vote on the update with the current CPA membership.
Sue – This will help to better support the teachers and reduce gaps when students move into the middle school program. The task force is working with Dr. Tony Byrd and Kevin Allen on how to move forward with this.
With this change, we would support five more teachers with grant money. Of course, more parents would be contributing donations from the middle school. There will be 17 new students who did not attend Challenge at Terrace Park coming into middle school program next year.
We will vote on a revised version of the bylaws and officially expanding CPA to include BTMS Hi-Cap program families at our next meeting on May 5th.
The original and draft change of our bylaws will be posted on the website for parents to review.
The plan is to keep all general CPA meetings here.
A suggestion for inclusion in the bylaws revision is the requirement to have at least one board member at the PTA meetings at the middle school.
Coming up:
Coffee chat – March 12th 1:00 Perrinville Coffee Bar
Next CPA Board meeting is April 14th – Tina Marohn’s house
May 5th next CPA General Meeting at Terrace Park Commons
Meeting adjourned – 7:45 p.m.