October 2020 – WSPTA Executive Director Message
Dear Members, PTA was founded as an advocacy organization and for over 120 years has advocated on behalf of children and youth at the school, district, state, and national levels. It is an amazing history of a grassroots organization changing the course of history and making our world a better place. Most incredibly, almost all…
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September 2020 – WSPTA Executive Director Message
Dear members, Most families join their local PTA for one of a short list of reasons. Some join because the PTA works together to advocate for and on behalf of children and youth in the schools. It is easier for the membership to push for change within a school than it is for a single…
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August 2020 – WSPTA Executive Director Message
Dear members, What is a PTA? At its core, it is a collection of families and teachers who have come together to improve the lives and education of the children in their care. This is the reason PTA was founded in 1897 and it is just as relevant today. The challenges are very different, but…
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Leadership
July 2020 – WSPTA Executive Director Message
Dear members, It’s been over three months since the Stay Home, Stay Healthy order began. Nerves are frayed, tempers are flaring, and patience is running thin. These are extremely difficult times and, for many of us, will be the hardest times of our lives. The desire for a return to “normal” runs deep and strong…
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Leadership
June 2020 – WSPTA Executive Director Message
Dear Members, The 2020 Virtual Convention is finished. Wow! What an amazing event. Thousands of volunteer hours and hundreds of staff hours over the course of 10 weeks resulted in an awesome event. We had over 900 registrants with 40+ online events including educational webinars, panel discussions, keynote speakers, awards presentations, one-on-one coaching, and interactive…
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May 2020 – WSPTA Executive Director Message
Dear Members, I am so excited! In a few short days, we will be holding our first-ever virtual convention. Almost all state PTAs opted to cancel their spring conferences. We decided to jump into this virtual world with both feet. It has been an incredible challenge and far more work than the in-person convention would…
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Leadership
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April 2020 – WSPTA Executive Director Message
Dear Members, As we cope with the pandemic, I thought I would share with you some of the lessons I learned living through the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the 1980s and 1990s. Like most gay men of my generation, I was greatly impacted by that awful disease, losing friends and a partner/husband. It was a terrible…
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March 2020 – WSPTA Executive Director Message
Dear Members, PTA members are such a passionate group of people! I see it every day in the thousands of hours that volunteers spend in support of the children and youth in our state. During the Washington state legislative session, it really comes through in testimony in Olympia where volunteers will drive 4 hours to…
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Leadership
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February 2020 – WSPTA Executive Director Message
Dear Members, Did you hear it? That loud bang? The one that came from Olympia when PTA descended upon the capitol? If you did not hear it, I am sorry you missed it. We had over 100 advocates attend our Focus Day and share their perspectives with our state legislature. Since we were snowed out…
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Leadership
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January 2020 – WSPTA Executive Director Message
Dear Members, Happy New Year! Wow, it’s 2020. I can hardly believe it. I have been a lifelong fan of science fiction and grew up on Isaac Asimov and Robert Heinlein. In the annals of science fiction, these are the years when space operas play out, the years when robots have either enslaved us all…
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Leadership
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ED Message