CPA Board Meeting Minutes – 4/13/10

CPA Board Meeting 6:30 p.m. 4/13/10 –  Megan Hicks House

In Attendence: Ginger Everhart, Sue Wilson-Schmitz, Tracy Hannuksela, Megan Hicks, Tina

Marohn

Introductions of nominees for 2010/2011 board:

Pam Gaspers is accepting the vice president position. We will not have a co-vice president for

this coming year. Sue, Ginger, Tracy and Tina are staying in their respective roles. Megan is will-

ing to help Pam with t-shirt orders next school year for Gifted Education Day. We will order them

early and have some available at the back to school BBQ.

Meeting minutes from Januaryʼs board meeting approved.

Treasurerʼs report (Tracy: see attached budget sheet)

Winter fundraising collected a total of $1340. We need to send out Spring funds request

soon.

We have received $16 for GoodShop/GoodSearch this year.

Teacher grant requests: Tracy sent out mail to let the teachers know how much of the

grant money they have still available for their classroom. She has not received many re-

quests this year, but expects teachers to submit receipts over the next couple of months.

She needs all teacher receipts before the end of the fiscal year.

Tracy has received a few WAETAG stipends.

$1,000 of teacher professional development speaker money is still available. Do we want

to give teachers a vote on what they want to use this money for? Tracy will contact Mary

Freitas to see how to move forward on this. Sue remembered Mary talking about Junior

Great Books training part II?

Lobbyist support money. Last year we gave $150 and will support this amount again this

term.


Reports:


Monthly Coffee Chats (Sue and Ginger)We had less attendance during the last one with only

two parents joining. We would like to continue to offer it and the next one is at Caffe Ladro at 5

Corners in Edmonds on April 18th at 2:00 p.m. The question came up over whether we wanted

to continue over the summer. Most of the members were in agreement to have them just during

the school year. We would like to find ways to encourage new parents to attend.

Presidents letter (Sue: see attached draft) – Sue will publish a finalized letter at the end of the

year that detail what the board has accomplished for the 2009-2010 school year as well as our

goals for 2010-2011. She also suggested putting a notebook together as a reference book to

pass down to future board members. Tina will put together instructions for using and maintaining

the CPA website.

Teacher Achievement Award Recognition – Teacher Achievement Award Recognition: We

are waiting to hear from Mary Freitas on when, where, and what the recognition will be

from the state for the Challenge teachers at Terrace Park so we can plan our own rec-

www.challengeparents.org

Recorded by: Tina Marohn , CPA Secretary

ognition for their achievement. We may be able to put unspent money budgeted for

WAETAG toward our recognition for the teachers.

Planning 2010-2011:

Challenge Family BBQ – We are planning on having this community building event on either

the 28th or 29th of August. Megan will make the reservation. We can reuse the flyer info from

last summer and post all the information on the website.

Calendar for 2010-2011 – Kari Potter has met with Mary Freitas on PTA events (see attached

proposed PTA schedule). Mary Freitas will meet with Ginger and Sue in May to discuss the cal-

endar of events for next year. We need to plan ahead in order to reduce the scheduling fees (it

is now $25 per form). Tracy is looking into putting this new fee into the budget for next year.

Fundraising schedule – CPA is changing to a semester schedule. We will have two fund drives

for the school year. We will have gifted education day t-shirts (Gifted Ed Day for 2011 is Febru-

ary 11th) available for sale at the BBQ in August and will provide information on our fundraising

for CPA that day. If parents would like to donate then, they can or  they can wait until we send

out the information at the beginning of the semester. The board will not be aggressively seeking

funds during the BBQ event. We will send out our 1st semester fundraising form in the first day

packets and then our 2nd semester fundraiser will go out after the mid-winter break in February.

Tracy will look at the average money donated by families to determine the requested fundraising

amount for the 2010-2011 season.

General meetings – We will hold four general meetings, two per semester (beginning of Octo-

ber, January, March, and May). Dates TBD.

Board meetings- Beginning of September, November, February, April, and June (schedule

TBD)

Goals:

Fundraising – Tracy to review current funds from families.

Reintroduction of parent classroom reps. – We didnʼt have any reps this year and in turn it

made communications more difficult for both CPA and PTA. We need to make sure to follow

through on this for next year.

CPA would like to combine our general meetings with guest speakers to attract more par-

ents. The proposal for the October general meeting was to combine with the “Beyond Chal-

lenge” event with presentations from IB and the UW. Next month we have speakers Drs. Brock

and Fernette Eide. Marcia Hollandʼs newsletter may have some people we can contact for

speaking engagements next year. We would also like to have Kevin Allen, the principal of Brier

Terrace, come in to talk about the middle school program toward the end of the year. We may

look into having someone in at the beginning of the year to talk about the challenge program for

new and interested families. We all agree it is important to have food and childcare available at

the meetings to help encourage attendance. The current set up makes it hard to hear people

talk in the commons. We may need to use a podium format instead of tables.

Community building ideas and parent involvement (Sue) – A meet and greet with all staff at

the beginning of school would be desired so parents can get to know who is who and to help

create a more inviting atmosphere at Terrace Park. Perhaps at curriculum night?

May 18th General Meeting agenda:

Vote in new board.

Announce the calendar

Secretaryʼs minutes

Treasurerʼs report

Principalʼs report

Speaker Drs. Fernette and Brock Eide (Sue has created an announcement for this and will

be promoting this outside of Terrace Park as well.)

Board meeting final agenda:

Date/time/location – June 9th at Meganʼs house or June 11th from 7-9pm

Tracy to report on fundraising budget

Compilation of Job Descriptions

BBQ planning

8:43 meeting adjourned

www.challengeparents.org

Recorded by: Tina Marohn , CPA Secretary