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President’s To Do List

November 12, 2009

Action Items:

  1. VIS Donation – The campaign is currently under-funded. PTAs were given a target donation of a minimum of $1000 to donate for this year. This would even be a time to dip into your reserves to give a more substantial donation. Factual information on the levies can be found on the ISD website.
  2. Nurses Program – If your PTA would like to help this holiday season our best answer right now is to talk to your school’s nurse or to the Issaquah Food Bank. Council will look into more information on this and pass along anything we learn.
  3. 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. Finally, gather all the input and send to Heather Gillette.
    1. Please feel free to edit:

If You Were At the Bargaining Table, What Would You Say?

In February, the Issaquah School District and the Issaquah Education Association, the union which represents ISD teachers, will begin bargaining for a new contract. The current contract expires at the end of August 2010. 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 and the Issaquah Chapter of Stand for Children 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 Monday, December 14th. The Issaquah PTSA Council will collect all the inputs and put them together in a community values paper that will be presented to the bargaining team at the beginning of February. Questions? Contact (name, email of your PTSA president).

  1. Tables – The District will continue to provide tables for this year but PTA will need to take care of this on their own next year. Please talk with your board on whether they would be open to purchasing up to 3 tables. Quick research online prices them at between $50 - $150. It would work best to have a store of 30 tables. No action to take until later in the spring other to find out how your board feels and would need to be put in next year’s budget to purchase this summer.
  2. Donations – Turn in your donations for VIS, ISF, Tiger Mt, Echo Glen, etc now, no need to wait. Mailing information is located on the Council website under “for Treasurers”.
  3. Program Surveys – Thank you to those who have already done this but for the few left please turn these in to Kimberly Montague or Camille Vaska.
  4. Local Unit Awards – Start talking to your board about what other local unit awards you want to go for this year.

Information Items:

  1. Volunteers for Issaquah Schools (VIS) – their website is www.visvote.org.  The website to advertise online voter registration is http://www.secstate.wa.gov/elections/.  Factual information is posted on the District website. 
  2. Reflections – District submissions are due on November 18 at the District Admin Building between 10am-12pm. Your Reflection chairs should already have this information.
  3. Applegate Grant Info – can be found on the Washington State PTA website under Applegate Grants. It includes the application form and last year’s grant recipients.
  4. PTAs Taking Significant Action - 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.

New Items:

1. Council Directory – Contact Deborah Parsons with any changes to your Council directory page as she will be publishing a “corrections” page to be distributed at the December GM meeting.

Best Practice Moment:

The Identity Extra Plan offered by AIM insurance to protect your PTA from identity theft is not necessary if your PTA is following Best Practices.

Consider doing either a written survey or a Zoomerang survey of your membership.  You might want to do this in early Spring to get feedback on the year to date and to plan for the next year.  Deborah Parsons will work with you to get it going.

Begin work on putting together your Nominating Committee that will be elected by the end of January.  A Council led Nominating Committee training will be on Thursday, Jan. 28 from 10-12 at the Issaquah School District Admin. building. 

Please bring a copy of your insurance to the December Council Meeting and give it to Debbie Sexton, treasurer.  This is for district facility use.

If you do not already have a system to pass on materials and information, start one now.  Notebooks, evaluation forms, copies of flyers, disks of materials, etc. need to be included.

Collection List for November (add to folder you started in Sep)

  • copy of volunteer appreciation flyer or article in newsletter
  • list of Board meeting dates
  • copy of budget with line item for State Convention highlighted