 Mark your calendars for our final Northshore Council PTSA General Membership Meeting of 2019-20! It will take place on Monday, June 1, 2020 at 7:00pm via zoom (see meeting info below). Topic: Northshore Council PTSA General Meeting Time: Jun 1, 2020 07:00 PM Pacific Time (US and Canada) Join Zoom Meeting https://us02web.zoom.us/j/84148631357?pwd=YzY2cWlrNEpWM1BsQ25YdUUxSy9Zdz09 Meeting ID: 841 4863 1357 Password: available upon request** **Password will be required to join the meeting. In addition to all of the normal updates and information sharing, we'll be announcing this year's Council award recipients, including Golden Acorn, Outstanding Educator, Outstanding Advocate, Outstanding Student Advocate, Outstanding Service and Honorary Lifetime Membership! We hope you join the fun in celebrating amazing individuals and the end of a wild PTA year! Questions? Please contact President Grace Jurado.
PTA is a membership-driven association. Sustaining and growing membership builds PTA's power as advocates and change makers not only in your own school community, but also at district, state and national levels. WSPTA recognizes PTAs for their work growing membership as well as for achievements in membership.
Congratulations to our Northshore PTA/PTSAs that have earned
WSPTA Membership Awards in 2019-2020!!!
Membership Achievement Awards:
100% Membership Award
(The 100% PTA Membership Award is presented to local PTAs that enroll at least as many members as there are fulltime enrolled students at the school associated with that PTA. This is the ultimate achievement in PTA membership and recognizes that every child in the school community has a paid PTA member to be their voice.)
100% Staff Membership Award
(The 100% Staff Membership Award is presented to local PTAs that enroll at least as many school staff members as there are full-time certificated employees at the school. This award recognizes the value of teachers and school staff as stakeholders advocating for all children through PTA.)
Membership Growth Awards:
Many thanks to all of our amazing Northshore PTAs/PTSAs for continually striving for membership growth, helping us to have an even more powerful voice for our children!
This year's recipient is Dr. Nancy Chamberlain. She currently serves not only on the WSPTA Board of Directors as Finance Officer, but also as Northshore Council PTSA's co-VP of Advocacy. She has dedicated many years to being a voice for all children, mentoring advocates and PTA leaders, and being all-around awesome. Heidi Baron Bennett, recipient of the 2019 Outstanding Advocate award, has graciously given permission to Northshore Council PTSA to share the speech she gave as she presented Nancy with the award at the 2020 WSPTA Convention. Washington State PTA Outstanding 2020 Advocate Award The Washington State PTA Outstanding Advocate award recognizes the individual who goes way beyond the call of duty at both the state and local level to advocate for the health, education and well-being for children and youth. Our Outstanding Advocate for 2020 is a remarkable individual with a rich history. This individual:
- Do you know who this is yet? Raise your hand if you do.
- Now, do you know who this is yet? Raise your hand if you do.
Please join me in recognizing our 2020 Washington State PTA Outstanding Advocate, a past Washington State PTA Advocacy Director and current Washington State PTA Finance Officer, Dr. Nancy Chamberlain. -- Heidi Baron Bennett May 16, 2020 WSPTA Convention We are so fortunate to have such a dedicated and tireless advocate working for our children in Northshore and beyond!
Congratulations to WSPTA's 2020 Outstanding Advocate, Nancy Chamberlain! 🎉🎉🎉  Each year, Washington State PTA recognizes the work of individuals, PTAs and Councils across the state via a variety of awards, including Leadership Academy and the Awards of Excellence Program. Some of our amazing Northshore PTAs submitted applications and were recognized for their efforts at the 2020 WSPTA Annual Convention in May. Awards work to celebrate the efforts of local PTAs and Councils in a variety of different areas. The criteria reflect a strong knowledge and application of best practices and the submission process can be rigorous. These awards are truly reflective of the dedication and strength of these PTAs and the powerful contributions they make in their communities. This year's recipients included:
FACE (Family and Community Engagement)
PTAs Taking Significant Action
Leadership Academy Program – (Recognizes and acknowledges leadership skills attained by PTA leaders throughout all levels of the association.)
Congratulations to our award-winning Northshore PTAs!!!
 As we spend our final months of the school year still under stay-at-home orders, and our children realize they will not be in a classroom again before fall, it’s easy to lose track of the year-end stuff our PTAs still need to take care of-- the things we have to accomplish as well as all those things that it would be nice to be able to do. Must Dos: There are two things a PTA must do before the end of the year: approve the budget for next year and elect new officers. Elections Hopefully by now you have seen the guidelines for holding an election virtually. If not, there are more details in this article on the WSPTA website as well as some resources on our website. Once you have elected your 2020-21 officers, be sure to email all of your officer information to support@wastatepta.org. For each officer (new and returning) they will need:
Budgets: Everyone’s Favorite Topic We need to look at our budgets differently than we would have two months ago. Depending on if you had a spring fundraiser you could no longer hold and on how many budgeted expenses you no longer have (Field Day is probably giving us all a nice budget buffer this year), you are most likely ending the year with a final bank balance much different than originally expected. With that in mind you should expect fall fundraising efforts to bring in less funds than usual. You may also want to modify some of your fall events to more community-based, lower cost or even virtual events. Look at ways to tweak your expenses for next year to lower them if possible. If it looks like you will start off the year with a stronger account balance than usual, you may also want to consider increasing scholarship lines since there will probably be more aid requests next year as our state continues to have record unemployment levels. Finally, since economic and health standards are constantly changing in 2020, remember that there will be opportunity over the summer for the new board to make adjustments to the budget if it looks like circumstances will change drastically by the fall. Remember: Budget decisions you make now will not bind you for the whole next year. Other Stuff (things you don't have to do, but may want to consider) Staff Appreciation This week (May 4-8) is Staff Appreciation Week and there have already been a lot of wonderful online thank yous to school and district staff, admin and teachers. Please encourage your families to keep the appreciation going all week long and use the hashtag #ThankATeacher in all appreciation posts. Some suggestions compiled by National PTA include:
Awards: to do or not to do We have seen lots of debate over whether or not to do awards (Golden Acorn, Outstanding Educator, Outstanding Advocate, etc) this year, and most of the PTAs in our area have decided to do move forward with them. Our recognition ceremonies will definitely look different this year, but there are two big reasons to do award this year: something happy and positive is always a good thing in “emotionally down” times like now, and we are seeing some amazing volunteers stand out with all they are doing to help during this crisis. With so many great options of people to recognize, why not take advantage of it? Plus, the award fees go to the State PTA scholarship fund—a win win situation! Council is looking forward to seeing what kind of creative ways our PTAs will recognize their award recipients this year. Year-end “Graduation” Celebrations (5th, 8th, 12th grades) Year-end “Moving On” Celebrations for kids on their last year at their school is another big thing on many PTA minds. By now, most of our high school seniors have received house signs recognizing them as 2020 grads. Some parents have also ordered signs from local sign companies for 8th grade graduates moving up to high school and 5th grade graduates moving up to middle school. If this is not already under way in your school, this is a great thing for PTAs to help coordinate and share the purchase info with your school communities. For more celebratory planning, PTA celebration chairs should meet with school admin to see how you can collaborate on this. Thank you all for all that you do. I am constantly impressed by the amazing ways I am seeing our Northshore PTAs adapt to this new normal, support their school communities, and keep their kids engaged. I’m sure some of you are already a step ahead of these suggestions, but we wanted to compile some of the key takeaways from our weekly roundtables in one place. We will continue to hold our weekly roundtables on Tuesdays at 12:00 through the end of the school year. If you haven’t joined us yet, please do!
 Our community is adapting to the stay-at-home-order, so there is lots going on with PTSA and our District community. The Washington State PTA Convention will be held May 11 – 21st with the Business Meeting on May 16th. Each PTA President should appoint their delegates by April 29th. Over the course of eleven days there will be roughly 35 professional development webinars and networking sessions held and none of them will overlap. The cost is only $60 to attend as many classes as you like. New boards are encouraged to send officers because this counts as the required training for next year. Every board needs at least one officer to take “PTA and the Law” which will only be 90 minutes this year. The membership unanimously elected the slate for 2020 -21 Northshore Council PTSA Executive Board. Congratulations to next year's elected officers:
Council Award nominations are due May 1st. Submit your nominations online. Elizabeth Meza, the Northshore School District (NSD) Director of Family Engagement and English Language Learners Support shared that the Northshore Schools Foundation (NSF) in partnership with the District have collected hundreds of books to share with families since libraries are closed and this is what families have requested. Please contact her at emeza@nsd.org if you are interested in donating books, volunteering to organize, or distribute books, or if you have families that you would like to connect to this program. Learn more about the book donation program on the NSF website. The NSF is also partnering with NSD to provide weekend meals and school supplies for families as needed. NSD Partnerships Coordinator, Natalie Campbell, shared that NSD staff are also working on virtual tours of schools for families transitioning to new schools. She also shared dates for a number of upcoming events, including:
The Northshore Schools Foundation is also working on Launch Day 2020 for high school Seniors, only this time it will be virtual and over the course of 3 weeks on Tuesday and Thursday mornings. They hope to offer sessions in topics such as basic car maintenance, finance, interviewing, cyber-security and personal relationships. Typically, they enlist recent grads to help. If you know any recent grads who are interesting in volunteering, please direct them to this online form. The Council will continue to host Zoom Roundtables every Tuesday at noon. Part of this week’s discussion was PTA budgeting. Local PTAs are urged to budget conservatively for 2020-21 considering fundraising may be down significantly for spring and fall and beyond. Focus on free community-building events. Be mindful of your PTA’s purpose and what is sustainable for your community. Perhaps keep extra money in reserve. Our next General Membership meeting will be June 1, 2020 at 7pm.
Local PTAs may award the following within their local community:
Northshore Council PTSA Awards: Similar to how you celebrate outstanding service in your PTA community, Northshore Council PTSA also celebrates amazing people. Please help us and nominate someone who you feel has made a difference! Award nominations are due by May 1, 2020. To nominate, you can either fill out the online nomination form or email Jane Chiodo. Visit our Council Awards page to learn more about Council awards and past recipients.
 In 2018, about 4.3 million reports were made to child protective services concerning the safety and well-being of approximately 7.8 million children. Last year, an estimated 678,000 children were found to be victims of child abuse or neglect nationwide. School districts are one of our most important partners in keeping children safe. Teachers, counselors, paraeducators and other school staff build strong relationships with students and often are the trusted adults who are able to report suspected abuse and neglect and find help for a child in need. Law Enforcement throughout the nation rely upon our school partners to help us best serve at risk children. However, closures and social distancing efforts in response to COVID-19 have limited mandatory reporters’ access to children and youth, making it harder to detect abuse or neglect and leaving many children at risk. EVERYONE is encouraged to keep an eye out and report concerns about child welfare. Let's continue to come together and protect our children and communities! Washington State PTA is dedicated to the health, safety and welfare of children and youth. Resolution 2.14, Child Abuse Prevention Supports explicitly addresses its resolve to provide voice, advocacy and resources toward necessary services and resources to support and educate families and communities about child abuse prevention. Resources:
  Please join us for a special general membership meeting on Monday, April 20th at 700pm via Zoom. At this special meeting, we will be electing officers for 2020-2021. With self-nominations closed, the 2019-2020 Nominating Committee presents the final slate of candidates for the 2020-2021 year:
Each PTA may send up to 4 voting representatives-- but we encourage ALL who are interested to attend. This is a great opportunity to connect with Council and local PTA/PTSA leaders as we work to support one another by asking questions, discussing challenges and sharing ideas. Topic: Northshore Council PTSA General Meeting Time: Apr 20, 2020 07:00 PM Pacific Time (US and Canada) Join Zoom Meeting https://zoom.us/j/621990455?pwd=RytpUGdLSXA0cUMxQTVZTXpXVlJUQT09 Meeting ID: 621 990 455 Password: available upon request One tap mobile +16699009128,,621990455# US (San Jose) +13462487799,,621990455# US (Houston) Dial by your location +1 669 900 9128 US (San Jose) +1 346 248 7799 US (Houston) +1 301 715 8592 US +1 312 626 6799 US (Chicago) +1 646 558 8656 US (New York) +1 253 215 8782 US Meeting ID: 621 990 455 Password: 019838 Find your local number: https://zoom.us/u/abIsmu6rb We look forward to seeing you there! If you have questions, please contact President Grace Jurado.
The submission process is now open!
Legislative issue submission title and short description due Friday, May 1, 2020. Resolution title and draft (for new and amended resolutions) due Friday, May 1, 2020. Completed proposal forms for issues, resolutions and legislative principles are due Monday, June 1, 2020. To assist you in the process, WSPTA has developed a series of four videos, "The Savvy Submitter's Guide to Issues, Resolutions, and Principles," to walk you through the required steps: The current legislative issue platform will be replaced at the 2020 Legislative Assembly in October 2020. Members will adopt a new Top 5 platform including the additional issues that will comprise the "also supported" list. Questions about submitting or about advocacy? Contact Northshore Council PTSA's co-VPs of Advocacy, Nancy Chamberlain and Charla Griffy Brown.
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