Presentation to PUSD Board by Pleasanton PTA Council on June 21^st, 2005

The Pleasanton PTA Council has completed its 2^nd full year of operation. The Council serves as an umbrella organization supporting our 8 local PTA units at Alisal, Fairlands, Hearst, Mohr, Vintage Hills & Walnut Grove elementary schools; Harvest Park Middle School and Amador Valley High School.

PTA members in Pleasanton contributed 66,759 volunteer hours to the schools and district during the 2004-2005 school year. At $12 per hour, this represents a contribution of over $800,000. This is in addition to the tremendous amount of funds that are generated through the fundraising efforts of the units and Council. These PTA volunteers play a key role in supporting the activities and programs in their schools as well as in advocating on behalf of all our students.

I would like to take this opportunity to tell you about a few of the highlights of this past year:

Last fall, our Council worked with the School District and the Child Abuse Prevention Agency (CAPA) to bring child abuse prevention classes to all of the District elementary schools. We were able to partially support this program through a $2,000 grant we secured through Rotary North. We hope to fully fund the program this Fall and to date have raised $13,000 through grants from the Alameda County Board of Supervisors and the City of Pleasanton’s Human Services Commission.

We hosted a successful Reflections Arts Recognition Program this year to showcase the writing, photography, visual art and musical compositions of students from elementary through high school in the District. There were 283 student entries submitted from all of the 8 member schools. Of these, 109 were selected and judged by the Council with the winners announced at a special awards ceremony in December. One of our 1^st graders at Mohr Elementary, Megan Tien, progressed through the channels and was announced as a National winner of an Award of Merit at the State PTA Convention in May.

In February, we hosted our first annual Founder’s Day luncheon at Alisal Elementary School where we honored our many PTA volunteers for their dedicated service on behalf of children. Over 70 PTA members, school board members and school district staff attended. Three Honorary Service Awards were presented to Jerri Long, Tanya Ludden & Jill Buck.

We began working with representatives of local health care agencies, school district officials, teachers and parents from many of our local units to form the “Healthy Lifestyles Council”. We piloted a plan to get kids more active using pedometers. This Council plans to focus primarily on nutrition and physical activity in the coming year and will be providing input to the District’s Wellness Policy. We are also looking at developing a “Community of Wellness” program modeled on the highly successful Community of Character initiative.

We continued our work on food allergy awareness by presenting the “Protect a Life” or PAL program to elementary school students in 13 classrooms at Alisal, Mohr and Fairlands schools.

As the first step in our outreach efforts, we planned and hosted the first citywide multicultural festival in May. “Passport to Pleasanton” offered visitors the opportunity to “visit” 12 different countries through seeing artifacts, tasting food, making crafts and playing games. In addition, 6 different community agencies were present to share information about their programs and services. The event culminated with live performances from groups of children and youth representing 13 different countries. Over 700 people attended this 2-hour event. We appreciated the support of the School District, Amador Adult Education, Rotary North and the Chamber of Commerce who all supported this event with funds or in-kind services. We are planning to expand this highly successful event by utilizing a larger venue and including a wider range of countries and cultures next Spring.

Our Council was pleased to be recognized at State Convention with a My PTA Award for Advocacy. We continued our focus on advocacy this year by bringing forward two resolutions to State Convention: one on the need for Credentialed School Nurses in our schools; and the other on Sun Safety: Preventing Skin Cancer at School. Both resolutions were passed by the 3,000 + delegates at the Convention. These now become positions of the State PTA and empower PTAs at all levels throughout the State to advocate for these issues on behalf of all children.

We applied for, and were successful in receiving, a grant for $1,000 from the City of Pleasanton to purchase sun safety videos, from the State Health Department. We will work with the District to provide these for use in our elementary and middle school classrooms in the upcoming years to assist schools in taking action on the important issue of educating our students and community members about the dangers of excessive sun exposure.

We have also developed a Parent Resource Guide on Talking to Children about Sex which we hope to print and mail to 5^th grade, and possibly 8^th grade, parents in the Fall. We have worked with Sally Dellanini on this project and would like to thank her for her assistance.

In addition, we have continued to take action on key legislative issues by meeting with our local legislators, sending letters and attending rallies on education funding and the need to ensure adequate funding for education and to protect Proposition 98. On the local level, our Council board members have been active participants on many of the District’s Strategic Planning Sub-Committees.

In addition to the sponsors mentioned previously, we would like to thank Rob Squires and Tiger Direct for a very generous $10,000 donation and to Ponderosa Homes, the Bank of Walnut Creek and Stephen Ryan & Associates for their financial contributions to the important work that we are doing on behalf of all children in Pleasanton.

I would like to introduce members of our incoming Council Executive Board for the coming year. I will be returning as President. Jamie Hintzke will serve as Executive Vice-President. Mary Crawbuck & Mary Holmberg will serve as VPs, Sally Dickinson as Treasurer, Ann Martin as Secretary, Cherub Halperin as Auditor, Vicky Reinke as Parliamentarian and Mary Anne Lindahl as Historian. We would like to acknowledge 3 members of our Executive Board who are moving on to serve on the Peralta District PTA Board next year: Tanya Ludden, Margaret Steele and Julie DeFord.

I would also like to thank Anne Everton who served as the Association of Pleasanton Teachers rep on our Council over the past year. We have appreciated and valued her input and our relationship with APT. Finally, in closing, I would like to thank the Pleasanton Unified School District for their ongoing support for our PTA Council. In particular, I would like to thank Dr. Casey and Cindy Galbo for their guidance and unwavering support of our programs and initiatives.