CPA Board Meeting
June 24th, 2009, 6:00 – 8:26 p.m. (Megan Hicks’ Home)

Attending the meeting: Ginger Everhart, Sue Wilson-Schmitz, Megan Hicks, Tina Marohn
CPA email/web presence aka: Communications
cpaboard@yahoo.com A Username and Password have been shared with the board.

Protocol is to first go through Mary Freitas and then Nancy Gilbertson to pass on information about events for families. As a board we need to go through proper channels to contact parents. We can set up information on the website and do a generic email to tell parents to check into the website periodically for event information. Need to be specific about having parents respond to events by including the event in the subject line of all emails.

Website: We do not yet have someone committed to managing the website. Jeff Merrill is ready to relinquish this responsibility. Cara Ball may be a good contact to ask for help. The website is currently being hosted at Jeff’s work, so we need a new hosting service. We can keep the same domain name – Challengeparents.org. We may need to update our account with Goodsearch. Megan is going to talk to Dan Hicks about managing it. Kristin has volunteered to maintain CPA bulletin board. Dan Everhart and Michele Park are currently maintaining the Terrace Park school website. Ginger needs to distribute copy code to board members.

Recap of Tuesday’s PTA/CPA meeting:
All were in agreement that the CPA/PTA meeting went very well and was a great start to the new year. The question came up about why CPA has to be separate entity – because the PTA is a national organization and because of the complication of funding for non-profits. Clarification: CPA will not hold a bingo night this year in order to avoid competition and confusion for attendance at the PTA sponsored bingo night.

Sue’s beginning letter to the parents is a great start. Sue is now handing off her work and Ginger is to take on the next stages. One goal is to make it clear that PTA is primary, but CPA still needs to make it important that we need funding as well.
WAETAG is again in town this year and is going to take place on a Friday night & Saturday and overhead is less. There are still binders from last year that we need to collect. Teachers will have to register and are encouraged to register early to get the early registration price. (They are not required to go – but are encouraged).

Budget:
Ginger indicated if we shrink our mission this year, we can shrink our budget. We have $3,000 cash carryover from last year.
6th grade challenge tea: The planning committee members donated approximately $150 to the cause and the budget needs to be increased for following years.  Also, the budget needs to include the memory books that each child receives, and the “little parting gifts” from the 5th graders. Need to increase the budget to $200 to cover tea, cakes, drinks, certificate, awards, programs, invitations, etc. The current budget is $100. Is $200 enough? Since it was determined at the joint CPA/PTA meeting that PTA was a more appropriate funding source for the 6th grade track team, Ginger suggested that we might be able to move those funds over to the sixth grade tea.

Do we have something for the traditional 6th graders now that we don’t have a middle school program anymore? Do we look at doing this for everyone next year? Need to follow up with PTA and Mary Freitas to find out what promotion ceremony is standard and see if we continue a separate one with Challenge. Sue thinks this ceremony was very Challenge specific and should remain separate. They have the 5th graders move up and take their place. Wonderful ceremony and emotional. Question – was Island Wood just for Challenge kids? Is there anything for the traditional 6th grade?
Back to school packets – Ginger is helping Amy Faris who is waiting for a response from Pidgie (Pidgie coordinates the packets). The packets go out on Back to School Night – 9/2.

Back to school CPA BBQ Update – Tracy’s update includes the following:
Park shelter is reserved and paid for – ($85) – Total budget is $300
Kathleen Pratt passed on to Tracy about 100 paper plates.
Her recommendation is to go to Cash & Carry instead of Costco. Tracy to compare prices.

Denise Schmitz is organizing letter boxing for the kids and other activities. Ginger has a business membership at Costco and can avoid markups. She will also look into donations from Costco. Megan is going to check with D&D meats and a friend who works for Costco. Items needed for picnic: Vege burgers, hotdogs, burgers, buns, condiments. We need to inventory plates & utensils – in storage next to library. Megan is going to see if she can get into the building to do this. We want to send out a BBQ picnic reminder email to Nancy Gilbert to forward to families.

Immediate action item: We need to get Ginger and Sue on as signatories before the end of July.

Community building event ideas Sue’s ideas: BioLyle’s Biodiesel Workshop (http://biolyle.com/) – would need a commitment to reserve him. Wicked – is coming 9/2 – 10/4 at Paramount. A minimum of commitment of 20 people gets us a group rate – final payment due July 10th. Sue’s idea is not to make this an official CPA event, but to give families an opportunity to join others and do this. The idea is to create an interesting event list to include others. Ginger brought up the Museum of Flight or other Boeing tours as another idea. Tina’s idea of a National Wildlife Federation Certification for the school as a community event (there was a recommendation to talk to Kutrich about this). We can incorporate these events as areas of academic study in the classrooms – science, environment, art, music, books. Encourage parents/families to share their interests to help create events. Need to discuss all this with Mary Freitas – Tina to connect with Mary about how we could go about this and what our focus should be. Sue also mentioned Mary Freitas’ book club idea for parents.

Proposal to update bylaws:
Ginger created a draft version with updates – see attached bylaws document. We need to form a committee to review and approve these updates – need to include others from outside the board. Many of the changes are from the removal of the middle school at Terrace Park. Proposed change to make a Treasurer position for only one year, to prevent fraud. Ginger to contact Kristin Merrill, Mary Phan, Mary Freitas, and Michelle Toshima. The goal is to complete the update to the bylaws before the first general meeting.

Proposed meeting schedule for 2009/2010 –

General meetings (2nd Tuesdays at Terrace Park)
Oct. – 13th 7:00 p.m.
March – 9th 7:00 p.m.
May – 11th 7:00 p.m.

Board meetings (Megan Hicks’ Home)
Sept – 15th 6:30 p.m.
Jan – 12th 6:30 p.m.
April – 13th 6:30 p.m.

New Business for next meeting: Guest speakers.

Recorded by Tina Marohn, CPA Secretary 6/24/2009 HYPERLINK “http://www.challengeparents.org” www.challengeparents.org