Summer Flies By - PTA Still Advocating!

NYS PTA Sends Comments on Every Student Success Act (ESSA) to the U.S. Department of Education:  Yesterday, NYS PTA sent a letter to the U.S. Department of Education which summarized our comments and concerns with the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) which you can read by clicking here. 

The letter, along with a press release which you can read by clicking here, was also sent late Thursday, July 28, to the NYSED, media, Educational Conference Board and legislative contacts.

We appreciate the intent of the new law; to enable more state and local input and control of our education system, more state and local control and input over standards, assessments and accountability measures and increased family engagement and focus on parental involvement under ESSA.

We do, however, urge caution regarding attempts in regulation to abrogate local and state control and decision making that was a cornerstone of ESSA. We are concerned about certain proposals in federal regulation and want to ensure that parents continue to have the right to make informed educational decisions for their children, especially in areas connected to assessments.

Comments can be submitted to the U.S. Department of Education as a state PTA, unit/council or by an individual. The deadline to submit is Monday, August 1, 2016 and you can submit your comments through Regulations.gov.

Summer Leadership Conference (SLC) is a Success: We hope you are all having a great summer and finding time to spend with your children. This past weekend NYS PTA had the opportunity to come together with over 200 of our members at Utica College for our Summer Leadership Conference to have fun networking while attending many of the over 40 workshops offered on leadership and advocating for the whole child. 

The attendees also brought school supplies to donate to Watson Williams Elementary School in Utica as part of a Community Service project led by our Youth Member, Lyndsey Petrofsky. Thank you to everyone who participated in the drive.

Attendee Candy Ditkowski shared in her own blog post (click here to read) that one of the items that stood out from her about the weekend is, "If your PTA unit can effectively communicate with one another, you open the door for more creative ideas, and in the process, set your PTA unit on a course for longevity." 

I also agree with her that as the weekend closed, "There is still much work to be done. However, after this Summer Leadership weekend, there is now an entire group of advocates who are empowered to move forward and do some really amazing things for every child." Thank you Candy for sharing what the weekend meant to you.

To access SLC workshop materials from our website click here. (They are also available from our mobile phone app; just go to SLC Schedule, click on the workshop, and scroll to the bottom to see the files. You can also follow the events of the weekend through our tweets as summarized in storify by clicking here.

~Bonnie

Bonnie M. Russell
NYS PTA® President
Communicate to Advocate!
everychild.onevoice.®

president@nyspta.org