Montgomery Blair High School PTSA

Minutes of PTSA Executive Committee Meeting --- October 9, 2006

Executive Committee Meeting Minutes

October 9, 2006
PTSA Executive Board Meeting

Present: Debra Reed-Gillette, Deborah Stoll, Beth Martin, Carol Smalls, Dave Ottalini, Bonnie Malkin, George Slenkovich, Diana Vidutis, Howard Kohn, Ron McClain, Melissa Yorks, Ray Scannell, Rosemary Hodges

Facilitator: Dave Ottallini
Time Keeper: Deborah Stoll
Recorder: Debra Reed-Gillette

Dave called the meeting to order at 7:33 pm.

Over 100 people signed in at the open house today!

Exec Board minutes from the past month were approved as posted.

We have received our first check from Acteva for $916 – mostly for Citrus. On-line is a resounding success! Thanks to out to Barry for getting this working.

Treasurer’s Report: Regarding the issue with splitting the dues from the donations MCPPTA says we need to split them out. When Nancy returns she will need to revisit it as well as the revised dues amounts and bring in a revised budget for approval.

BSA: There has been not much action. BSA is now a part of the Rec Department. There have been no emails from the program in the past 5-6 months. Mr. Segura is now running the program. Mr. Grossman and Mr. Short are part of the BSA committee along with other staff and students to help with program development. A girl’s activity specialist is being brought in to develop more girl-oriented activities and draw in more girls to the program. Sports offerings will be modified each season. HSA prep and tutoring by 4 teachers will be offered during the academic support segment of the program. We are trying to push the school’s engagement and move the program design to include more academic support/help. There was very good press for the pre-NSL course offered this summer by the program for ESOL students. One issue that is happening is that the county council believes that because the Rec department runs it, that BSA is purely a Recreation program. The programs roots are academic support. The school and the PTSA need to be more involved in the program design to facilitate the academic focus.

Athletic Alcohol & Drug Policy: This policy is not well publicized. There appears to be little follow-through and no meetings were held, as required at the beginning of the year for the athletes. Last year there was no meeting held for winter athletes. It is suggested that since the new policy is not being enforced that we should inform the school that the school should revert to the county policy.

Athletic Fields: For the county the first stage of artificial turf installation will be experimental. The second stage will be installation of turf on all major fields. Blair has a good opportunity to be in the 1 st stage of installation. We need to advocate for it if we want the fields at Blair. True field renovation for natural turf would be upwards of $800,000. We need to inform Diane Martin to advocate to be the next artificial turf site.

Membership: The membership database has 309 members and will probably have about 350 total members at the end of the membership drive. We have collected over $10,000 between dues and donations. We need to make another big push for membership at the next PTSA meeting. Barry is to put information on the website informing members that if they haven’t received their t-shirt premium they need to actually attend a meeting to receive it.

12 th grade parent meeting: Please send any comments/suggestions about the 12 th grade parent meeting to Deborah Stoll and Anne Kaiser. About 200 people were present. However, much of the material presented seemed “too late” and should have been presented to junior, not senior, parents.

9 th grad parent meeting: There appear to be a lot of issues surrounding the “off academy” students getting their announcements, etc. Suggestions on improving “connecting” these kids should be sent to Cindy V.

Graduation venue: The pro-bono lawyer is currently working on a memo to the BOE regarding the non-issue about using Jericho. The memo will ask the BOE to go to court for a declaratory judgment. The firm has agreed that it will represent MCPS if they are sued.

Job Fair: We need to solicit individuals to help run a job fair at MBHS for students not planning on attending college. This job fair should have apprenticeship information and information about the Meaney Center.

El Golfo Night: October 11

Volunteers: MCPS is now requiring monthly reporting of volunteer hours. Protocol for volunteers needs to be provided. There should be no impromptu chats with Mr. Gainous or discussion of policy issues with staff in the office.

Announcement only List Serve: This list serve will be provided to give information from the MBHS PTSA, InfoFlow, Ms Platkey, volunteer requests, and other school related announcements only!

MiniGrants: 13 have already been received. An announcement reminding staff about the minigrant deadline will be made at the next ILT meeting.

Latino Outreach: There will be an ESOL Parent Meeting on 10/25. Interpreters will be provided.

Blair Foundation & Blair Alumni: Blair Education Foundation is a 501c3 and the money in the foundation has been used to jumpstart the new Blair Foundation. This is not run by the PTSA but will be run in conjunction with the Blair Alumni Association. They have asked for 10 projects that they can fund/mentor.

Blair After Prom: The Blair After Prom now has 3 committee coordinators and they will be attending the countywide After Prom meetings and beginning to organize the After Prom Committee.

Pedestrian Safety: Clarity is needed for the student parking lot/bus lot as to whether or not parent pickup/drop off is allowed. There is currently no monitoring of this lot and several accidents/issues have occurred. In previous years, this lot was strictly monitored to prevent parent pickup drop off. Signage for the school is also an issue and this needs to be coordinated with the correct state/county contacts. Blair does not have any visible signage at the Colesville Road parking lot entrance or near the fire station.

Cluster News: MCCPTA – our CIP was not filed for Blair with the other CIPS. The PTSA will contact the BOE to inform them that our CIP is an attachment. This was an MCCPTA oversight, not a Blair issue. The BOE operating budget is now being developed and includes identifying at risk kids.

Tuesday’s PTSA Meeting: This meeting will primarily be informatory. Mr. Gainous will discuss security and the id policy, Edline, capacity issues. It was noted that the policy for the ids should be clarified PRIOR to the meeting and ground rules for the Q&A should be developed and adhered to. In addition, Kevin Moose the International Studies lead will make a presentation.

Dates to remember:

10/11 El Golfo Night

10/14 Homecoming Dance 8-11 SAC

10/17 PTSA Meeting 7:30 pm Media Center

10/25 ESOL Parent Meeting