Hello
Project Arrow Parents,
On behalf
of the IPPA-PTA Board, we would like to welcome you back to the new school year
after a long HOT summer. We have scheduled our General Membership
meetings for this coming school year and have several events in the planning
stage.
Schedule
of IPPA PTA general meetings:
Location: Crouse Education Center (CEC), 780 Shoreline Drive, Aurora, IL 60504
Location: Crouse Education Center (CEC), 780 Shoreline Drive, Aurora, IL 60504
Time: 7pm
start
Tues,
September 25th **
Tues,
November 27th
Tues,
February 5th
Tues, April
16th
**Jeanine Buishas (Instructional
Specialist-Gifted/Differentiation) and Allison Sherman (Director, Core
Curriculum K-8) will be providing an update on how they have aligned
the Common Core Standards to the elementary and middle school Project
Arrow programs, a more detailed synopsis will go out before the meeting.
This is great opportunity to learn about your child’s Project Arrow curriculum.
Attached
please find our 2012-2013 Membership form. We have revised our
dues to family instead of individual membership. Membership needs to
be renewed every school year.
Legislation:
We were
busy this summer working on Legislation on behalf of Gifted and
Talented. Representatives from local Gifted and Talented
organizations, Oswego's PACE and D203's STAGE, joined us in meeting with
Congresswoman Judy Biggert, who serves on the Education & Workforce
Committee.
We discussed funding and the reauthorization of the TALENT Act, which
replaces the Javits Act. In 2011 Federal funding was cut to the Javits
Act and is in need of attention. We learned that the Secretary of
Education, Arne Duncan, and the Education & Workforce Committee do not
interact. We asked if Gifted and Talented was a topic of discussion
during her meetings in EWC, her answer was NO. She has a staffer
dedicated to Education and he will now be getting to know us since we want to
change that. Representative Biggert suggested that we also approach the
office of Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan.
We didn’t waste time in asking Representative Biggert if she
would join in sponsoring the TALENT Act, she didn’t decline, but didn’t
accept. We left the meeting with direction on our next step and that
would be to follow up with her office to further push the discussion of
having funding for gifted and talented.
The
goals of the Indian Prairie Project Arrow PTA are to:
- Work with the school district to provide the best
educational experience for gifted and talented children and help them
reach their full potential
- Provide a local community support group for
parents, guardians, families and educators of gifted and talented children
- Inform legislators, school board members,
educators, and the community about the unique challenges of giftedness and
the importance of gifted programming
- Be a resource of information on gifted services
and community programs
Please
don't forget to visit and join our new Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/#!/groups/IPPAPTA/
Please feel
free to email us at ippa.pta@gmail.com if you have any questions. If
you would like to be removed from this group, please email your request to
ippa.pta@gmail.com.
Respectfully,
Laura Swanson, President
Brian Prince, 1st Vice President
Greg Smith, 2nd Vice President
Sridhar Krishnaswamy, Treasurer
Suchitra Sharma, Secretary
Rebecca Burns, Legislation
