Meeting Minutes

Present:  Sam Star, Janet Sleath, Pamela Pakker-Kozicki, Sandy Tennyson, Maureen Kostyack, Tom Wolf, Oksana Britsova, Aimee Bramble, Mary Erickson, Steve Havas.

Ten CSCA members present – twelve CSCA members are required for a quorum. 

Meeting called to order at 6:35 PM.

1. Budget for 2012-2013

Aimee recently determined that the money budgeted for staff appreciation was intended to be a cash gift for the staff that is usually given to them at the holiday luncheon.  As this was not done at the lunch in December, it will be done at the May staff appreciation event instead.  

There are many budget requests for the next school year.  The proposed budget for 2012-2013 provided by Sam includes all these requests and comes to about $90K, which is more than the CSCA can afford.  Oksana has requested support for extra time for the school counselor - she confirmed that this has to be enough to make the position full-time, i.e. it will not work if the CSCA provides only part of the money that she has requested.  Karen currently works at another school on Fridays but would give that up if she were full time at TCS.  The situation is the same for Wyn – the CSCA would have to pay for 0.2 of her salary if it chooses to support her position.  Oksana noted that it’s important to consider the positions rather than specific people.  The BLT and staff have agreed that having Wyn at 0.4 is sufficient for her to do arts integration.  By school district guidelines, TCS is fine with 0.8 of a counselor (guideline is one counselor per 340 students).  

The School District supply budget is divided by departments, and should be enough to purchase essential supplies.  Some, but not all, of the activity fees collected by CSCA has been spent.  Oksana said it was unclear whether the school district supply money will disappear at the end of this school year, or may carry over.  Oksana, Tracey Lott, Steve and Sam will follow-up to determine what happens to unspent school district on June 30.    It was stressed that teachers should spend the school district supply money before their allotted CSCA supply money.   Steve, Sam and Oksana will meet separately to go over the accounting.  Steve also offered to meet with each department to go over how much CSCA money they have to spend. 

The CSCA is losing the Mother Earth grant but Andy Bell would still like to receive $5,000 for the Model United Nations program.  About 30 - 35 students are in MUN.  The money is primarily used as partial scholarships for students who cannot fully the cost to attend the MUN conferences in places like New York City or San Francisco.  They could go to a local convention in Seattle instead of a regional (San Francisco) or the national one in NYC, which would reduce costs. 

Oksana has requested $5,200 to support guitar lessons at EMP, which would be an elective, for-credit, class for up to 30 students.  EMP would supply the guitars. Having an additional elective class, such as guitar, would help with scheduling.  Oksana may survey the students on a guitar elective to gauge the interest level.  It probably wouldn’t be possible to provide a different elective for less than $18K.  This would also provide a meaningful partnership with the local community.  Margaret Chodos-Irvine& Molly Pritchard have a connection with Teatro Zinzanni.  We’re currently not aware of other class opportunities in the local arts community, but a parent volunteer could research other opportunities next year with arts groups such as Teatro Zinzanni, ACT, Pacific Northwest Ballet, etc.

It’s been determined that additional rent (e.g. theater use for drama) should be charged to the district not to the school.  In the first half of the year, CSCA paid $1,300 for the Drama class to rent the Theater of Puget Sound located on the ground floor of Seattle Center.  It sounds like we won’t have this expense next year.  It would be best to have Tracey Lott confirm. 

Jon Greenberg has asked for $5,000 to support the Writers in the Schools project again next year. 

Oksana would like to take the whole school to the SISPUS rope course.  The actual course is very cheap but we would need to provide transportation.  The students would stay overnight.  SISPUS came to us last year and worked with students in groups.  Oksana was asked to provide a proposal for this before the May 8 meeting.  

It was agreed that budget requests that have a direct correlation with instruction should be a priority. 

In June 2011, CSCA spent $7,500 for the premium version of In Design and a sufficient number of licenses for the computer lab.  At this point, CSCA has not received any software requests.

Sam will attend the staff meeting in two weeks’ time to discuss budget issues.  It was requested that Oksana and/or the BLT provide feedback on budget priorities. 

2. Status of students with Ds and Es 

Following the recent after-school and Saturday homework clubs, including a homework “marathon” last Saturday, the number of students with Ds and Es has dropped significantly. The school wants to start working with these students immediately next year, and is considering including these students in the study skills group with students that have IEPs.  This means that the students will be taking study skills instead of an elective class.  The teacher’s overtime for homework club and Saturday school is paid out of the school budget.  This year CSCA allocated $5,000 for the Homework Club & Math Tutoring, and has currently placed another $5,000 in the draft CSCA ’12 – ’13 budget. 

The new skills centers that the school district is starting next year will be available to all students – one of the centers (Animation) will be housed upstairs in the Center House.

3. Faculty rep on CSCA board

It was agreed that it would be good to identify a member of the TCS staff who would be willing to be on the CSCA board.  Oksana asked if the CSCA will provide a stipend for a staff member to attend. Depending on how many meetings that person attended, it may be possible for the CSCA to provide a stipend.  Oksana suggested that Tracey might be a good staff rep.

4. Community building events

Sam, Janet & Margaret Chodos-Irvine recently attended a state PTA regional convention/workshop.  Sam noted that the state PTA would call the meeting we’re in right now a board business meeting.  The speakers at the workshop encouraged PTAs to have more general meetings/community building events, such as a talent show, orientation for new families, pizza party, teenage mental health speaker, and educational nights with speakers (e.g. a teenage mental health speaker, school board rep for question and answer night), etc.  These meetings would have either no business or just 10 minutes of business. 

It was suggested that we consider having business meetings every other month, and make the pizza party an annual event.  We would need to increase the Community Building Committee’s $500 budget to $1,500 - $2,000.  Other ideas include organizing parents by year, having a college preparation meeting, having parent reps. for each year, putting together an e-mail chain, holding smaller parties for parents where alcohol is available. It was agreed that we should consider holding four regular events per year. 

5.  Big Lots $2,345 check

This money has not been allocated yet.  Big Lots stipulated that the students need to decide how they want to spend this.

6. Wallace Foundation

Apparently, the Wallace Foundation is going to award $1 million to the Seattle School district in ’12 – ’13 for arts education.  Oksana is hoping that the money provided by the Foundation will be divided evenly between the schools and that TCS will get 10K.  We probably won’t know by June how much money TCS will get. 

7. TCS lease

It was proposed that the CSCA create a committee in ’12 – ’13 to look at the TCS lease.  Oksana noted that her boss has indicated that the school district wants to support small alternative schools, including TCS, although this has not always been the case.  Oksana said that she has a copy of the lease. 

8. Parent-teacher conferences

TCS has not held parent-teacher conferences for two years – these are not required.  While they are a way to intervene for students who may have problems, the school is intervening in other ways, such as homework club & Saturday school.  The staff feels it is important to save time for the kids that really need it. The school has more kids with 504 plans, and so the teachers are spending more time in SIT meetings each Monday morning.  The families come to those meetings. 

9.  Oksana noted that “many” of the minority students are choosing not to stay at TCS.  There was a brief discussion about what can be done to help keep a “critical mass” of non-white students at TCS.

10.  Treasurer’s report 

General support donations are significantly higher than anticipated ($2,300 vs. $300).  All money received from Network for Good goes under general contribution although some of it may be from the letter campaign.  Corporate matching funds are also high.  We are slightly below the anticipated funds from the letter campaign ($6,700 vs. $7,000) and below on enrichment fees ($21,000 vs. $30,000). At the meeting, Oksana reported that CSCA received a check from a parent who works for Gates Foundation for $300; with the matching funds, this is worth $1200. 

The CSCA issued scholarships to three kids to cover AP test fees. The AP test fee for students who qualify for free or reduced lunch is $15.  These three kids were not in that category but requested help paying the test fees.  The students were asked to pay $15 and CSCA covered the rest of the cost.   

Free & Reduced Lunch Program:  Sam recommended that we put a note in the BLAST encouraging families to apply for free or reduced lunch, as there are significant benefits for the school in identifying all the students who qualify.  Karen Harmon has information on other benefits of qualifying for free or reduced lunch.

As part of its budget deliberations, CSCA needs to develop a policy on how much reserve it should keep in the bank.  It was agreed that we should check the state PTAs recommendation for reserves, and then discuss whether we want to decrease the reserve, use it to fund on-going programs, etc.   

11. Future CSCA meetings

We need to provide 10-15 days’ notice of a general meeting.  It was agreed that we will hold a regular CSCA meeting on May 8 and then hold a general meeting on May 22 to vote on budget and officers, and changing by-laws for number required for quorum and for allowing students to vote.  It was noted that the state PTA laws require the quorum to be no less than 10 members. 

12. Approval of March CSCA meeting notes

Approval of the March meeting notes was proposed by Sam Star, seconded by Aimee Bramble and passed unanimously.

13.  April 28^th Fundraising Party

We don’t need auction software due to the small number of items in the auction.  Aimee is meeting with Eddie Tong of Bank of American who helped set up ability to take credit cards at last years’ house parties.  We will need a laptop with wireless capacity.  There is a one-time set-up fee of $99, plus a $1.99 per month charge, so the cost overall to setup is $120. We can also pay $30 per month to have this capability all year.  Aimee will find out more and make a proposal to the board members.  Aimee, Tom and Steve will work on this.

Approximately 60 people have RSVP’d so far.  The committee is hoping to double this number.

14. CSCA Survey

At the state PTA workshop, it was recommended that PTAs annually perform member surveys asking the members if they are satisfied with their PTA, and what they would like to see more/less of.  Sam will draft a survey and send it round to others for input. 

15. Thank you cards

It was suggested that the CSCA get a box of thank you cards, maybe with student art.  Janet will look into this.  It was also suggested that we have a thank you card party, to send cards to donors.  We also need to send thank you cards to key volunteers. Janet has a list of people who have offered to help write cards.

16. Recruitment of people for officer and board positions 

Mary Erickson has expressed interest in helping with fundraising – she will talk to Liz Wolk, Steve and Sam about this. 

The vice president goes to BLT meetings which are held once per month (usually immediately before the CSCA meeting).  It would be good if we could recruit a new VP who has visions of becoming president in 9 – 12 months.  We also need a new treasurer, BLAST editor, volunteer coordinator, and Community Building Committee members (preferably a few people for each event).  The slate of CSCA officers should be in place for the May 22 meeting.  We only need to vote on officers, not other CSCA board members.  All chairs of standing committees are automatically board members. 

17.  Miscellaneous items:

The CSA should consider registering with PCC, Safeway and Amazon.  A small percentage of each purchase would be shared with TCS.

The Arts Showcase will be on June 7.  Santoro’s books will do a book fair on the same night with a portion of the proceeds going to the school.

There will be a three-day WA state conference at Sea-Tac on May 4-6.  They offer good workshops.  The cost to attend is $150 per person. The CSCA has two voting seats at the convention and could pay the registration fee if anyone wants to attend.   Anyone who like to be state conference as the Center School representative, and attend other workshops should contact Sam ASAP. 

Meeting adjourned at 8:45 PM.        

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Download as PDF

CSCA Board Notes | 10 April 2012.pdf