 It was the first meeting of the year, and we were thrilled to (virtually) see over 25 attendees from across the district participate! The membership unanimously elected two new officers to the board: Kimberly Ortiz for the position of Secretary and Diana Christiansen for the position of Vice-President of Advocacy. Thank you to each of them for stepping up to help lead Northshore Council PTSA! In addition to elections, members revised new goals, approved Standing Rules, and voted on an updated budget. Membership Chair, Melissa Kline noted how local PTAs were quite creative in their membership drives this year, ensuring easy, online join options for members to renew their memberships. (Find your PTA/PTSA by clicking here.)
We’re happy to announce the continuation of our Educational Speakers and Community Events Grant Program. Local PTAs are encouraged to apply solo or in collaboration with another local PTA! Deadline for the 2nd round of applications is Nov. 27th. During this packed meeting, we also had the pleasure of hearing from community leaders, including School Board Director Jacqueline McGourty, NSD Partnerships and Volunteer Coordinator Natalie Campbell, each of whom shared updates and answered questions about recent projects and current initiatives, including exciting news about the ground breaking at the Northshore Concert Hall at Inglemoor High School and the opening of Ruby Bridges Elementary. Northshore Nourishing Network Director Sue Freeman shared information on the increasing food insecurity facing members of this community. Ms. Freeman has been collaborating with Skyview Middle School PTSA to create a food pantry, and shared a plan to disseminate helpful information for those wishing to donate to foodbanks. Council meetings are a great way to reach other PTA leaders and learn about what is happening in the district and PTA. We hope you will join us for our next general membership meeting on Monday, November 16th!  This year it's even easier for your PTA/PTSA to pay the yearly Council Program Fee!
On your October Memberplanet invoice you will see a new line for $100 titled ‘Council Program Fees’. This will allow you to pay this fee through automatic deposit at the same time you pay your council membership fees. A notice explaining more about the yearly fee and the payment process was emailed to local PTA/PTSA Presidents and Treasurers on August 31st. If you did not receive this email, or have any questions about the Council Program Fee, please contact Council Treasurer, Liz Nord.  The Washington State PTA Standards of Affiliation Agreement Checklist 2020-2021 is now available! This checklist is a tool to help your PTA keep up with its legal requirements, both as a non-profit and as a PTA. The requirements come from the IRS, the State of Washington, your insurance company, and WSPTA. What your PTA needs to do:
There have been a few updates this year to make the SOA even better, including an introduction page that has clear instructions, calls out what’s new to the checklists in 2020-21, and offers a number of resources to answer questions and give more detail on all requirements. This video from WSPTA offers a great overview of SOA and what it means for your PTA: In addition, WSPTA offers a number of tools to help support your PTA in completing the SOA checklist, including:
Remember that sharing the progress of your SOA with your members also lets others know about how your PTA operates and shows the work that goes on, often behind the scenes, to keep your PTA legal, safe and operating within the very best practices of our state. Questions? Council is here to help!
 As we move into a new school year with continued distance learning and public health concerns limiting in-person meetings, Northshore Council is hoping to promote collaboration between our local PTAs/PTSAs in developing opportunities for Parent Education and Community Connection to our members.
Please let us know what activities your PTA/PTSA is interested in planning to help parents learn, connect, and successfully support students in 2020-21 by filling out this form: https://forms.gle/HhvohMFnif1mZFGh7 Deadline to complete this form is September 23, 2020. If you have any questions, please contact Lauren Lewis, Northshore Council's F.A.C.E. Chair.  Northshore Council is providing a new service for local PTAs/PTSAs: Online Meeting Hosting!
This can be used by any local PTA/PTSA that wants Council to host a Zoom meeting for them. Here is how it will work:
 Every year PTAs start their membership campaign and every year families ask the same question: "Why join the PTA?" This year especially, families may be asking why they should support PTA. It can be hard to communicate your PTA's value now that everything is online when families are used to attending PTA events or seeing the support your PTA does in the classroom. That's why it's more important than ever to answer the question "Why PTA?" One great way of doing that is sharing with your families the reason why you support the PTA. Knowing WHY those leading your PTA serve is a great way to inspire other families to support your PTA by joining or donating. Check out all the reasons that inspire your Northshore Council Leaders to PTA below! Interested in making your own "Why I PTA" slides? Contact Council's VP of Membership, Melissa Kline, for help on how to.  Please join us for our first general membership meeting of the year on Monday, September 21, 2020 via Zoom.
In addition to our regular business items, we’ll also be holding elections for open board positions (see Notice of Election article below), voting on updated standing rules, goals and budget, and hearing updates from community leaders. Topic: Northshore Council PTSA General Meeting Time: Sep 21, 2020 07:00 PM Pacific Time (US and Canada) Join Zoom Meeting https://zoom.us/j/95738720814 Meeting ID: 957 3872 0814 Passcode: Available upon requst.* One tap mobile +12532158782,,95738720814# US (Tacoma) +13462487799,,95738720814# US (Houston) Dial by your location +1 253 215 8782 US (Tacoma) +1 346 248 7799 US (Houston) +1 669 900 9128 US (San Jose) +1 301 715 8592 US (Germantown) +1 312 626 6799 US (Chicago) +1 646 558 8656 US (New York) Meeting ID: 957 3872 0814 Find your local number: https://zoom.us/u/adAC3zm7jn Council meetings will build your PTA knowledge, give you the opportunity to network with other PTA, school district and community leaders, and they can be a lot of fun, too. Each PTA may send up to 4 voting representatives-- but we encourage ALL who are interested to attend. We look forward to seeing you there! *A meeting passcode is required to join. It will be sent to local leaders via email. You can also request the passcode by emailing Council PTSA Communications VP, Rachel Fitzgerald.  Hello Northshore PTA/PTSA Leaders!
All great Membership Campaigns start the same way: with a plan! As you begin to coordinate your 2020-2021 membership plans, think about the reasons why families and staff should join.
This year it's more important than ever to kick off your campaign and start entering those memberships because Washington State PTA has a ***NEW*** requirement. This year, in order to remain in good standing, your PTA/PTSA must have at LEAST 25 members entered into memberplanet by October 31, 2020. Why is it important to remain in good standing? If you want to attend convention, send in reflections submissions, apply for awards, or apply for grants you must be in good standing. One way to increase your membership this year is to make sure it is EASY to join online. I would love to compile a list of all our local PTAs/PTSAs with a link directly to your site to join online. This will make each PTA/PTSA more accessible to members of our community, school board, and even district admin who might be looking to join. Please email me your updated join link. I will even join the 1st THREE PTAs/PTSAs to email their links! Please know you can contact me anytime with questions or to help you brainstorm ideas for your membership campaign. Reminder: Our first Northshore PTAs Connect is this Thursday, August 13th. This first online roundtable will have a focus on membership. And, remember, Membership is everyone's job, so all officers are welcome to join! Additionally, please email your membership chair name(s) and contact information to me ASAP so they can be added to all communications about membership. Melissa Kline Northshore Council PTSA Membership Chair membership@northshorecouncilptsa.org  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!
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.
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