Academic Booster Club » Urgent

Three Minutes of Your Time Needed Right Now

ABC Board — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 01:58:49 +0000

Received from the National Association for Gifted Children:

Javits Funding in Peril in Senate: Help Needed with Senate Appropriations Committee

The Senate appropriations subcommittee that handles education funding allotted $0 for the Javits Gifted & Talented Students Education Act yesterday.

We have a chance to recover Senate funding for the Javits program if a few Senators on the committee speak to Chairman Harkin personally when the full appropriations committee meets TOMORROW (Thursday) afternoon. Because your Senator, Maria Cantwell, is on the Labor/HHS/Education appropriations subcommittee, we’re asking you to CALL her office and ask to speak with the Education staff person in an effort to get Senator Cantwell to take action in support of the Javits program at the Appropriations Committee markup tomorrow. Please make your as soon as possible, but before Noon on Thursday. You may have to leave a voicemail message.

We’re working in coordination with the Council for Exceptional Children in suggesting the following points to make when your call:

My name is _______________. I am a constituent from ____________ (town/city) and I am extremely concerned that the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Education voted to eliminate funding for the Jacob Javits Gifted and Talented Students program earlier this week. This program is the only federal investment in gifted education. While the Javits program is small by federal standards, funded at $7.5 million last year, it impacts thousands of students, teachers, and schools across the country.

Studies show a growing gap at the highest achievement levels between low-income students and their more advantaged peers, which is partly due to a lack of resources and teacher training to identify and serve these students. The Javits program directly addresses this issue by focusing on developing strategies to identify and serve students who traditionally have not had access to gifted education programs. Because of work done through the Javits program, teachers have been trained to better understand how to identify high ability in students and modify curriculum to meet their needs. Elimination of funding for the Javits program would also result in closure of the National Research Center on the Gifted & Talented, which would be a tremendous loss to classroom teachers and school leaders who depend on the best practices information produced and disseminated by the Center to improve instruction.

I understand that the full Appropriations Committee will review the bill on Thursday afternoon. I urge the Senator to do everything possible to reverse the earlier decision made by the education subcommittee and fund the Javits program at at least the $7.5 million funding level it received this year.

If you have any examples of how how your state or school district has benefitted from the Javits program (e.g., that you use curriculum or assessments developed under a Javits grant, or if your districts have relied on information about gifted students and classroom strategies from the National Research Center), be sure to tell the staff person. It’s important that Senators understand who has benefitted from this federal investment.

All Senate offices can be reached through the Capitol operator at 202-224-3121. Senator Cantwell’s office is 202-224-3441. You may also use the Council for Exceptional Children’s online action center, which will link you to your Senator’s office, at http://capwiz.com/cek/callalert/index.tt?alertid=15422516

I just called and left my message. My phone call lasted three minutes. Please pick up the phone right now and make the call. Thank you for your support!

Two Great Opportunities for Parents this Week

ABC Board — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 07:17:40 +0000

There are two great opportunities for parents of gifted children coming up this week.

On Tuesday, July 27th, the Northwest Gifted Child Association, http://www.nwgca.org, and SENG (Supporting the Emotional Needs of the Gifted), http://www.sengifted.org, are hosting a free presentation, Eleven Key Parenting Issues, with Dr. James Webb, author of A Parent’s Guide to Gifted Children and other books, in the Lake Washington School District this summer. Dr. Webb will be in town preparing for next year’s SENG Annual Symposium in Seattle in July 2011.

Eleven Key Parenting Issues, Presented by Dr. James Webb

Tuesday, July 27, 2010
7:00pm – 9:00pm
Redmond High School Performing Arts Center
17272 N.E. 104th Avenue, Redmond

This is a FREE EVENT — there is no RSVP required!!

Eleven issues are common concerns for parents of gifted children — from tots to teens:

♦ Communication and relationships
♦ Motivation and underachievement
♦ Discipline, power struggles, self-management
♦ Intensity, stress and perfectionism
♦ Acquaintances, friends and peers
♦ Siblings and only children
♦ Values, traditions and uniqueness
♦ Idealism, unhappiness, and depression
♦ Complexities of modern parenting
♦ Misdiagnosis
♦ Finding a good educational fit

Information will be given about each, along with how four major factors – range of ability, asynchronous development, over excitabilities, and thinking styles — influence these issues.

James T. Webb, Ph.D. has been recognized as one of the 25 most influential psychologists in gifted education. In 1981, he established
SENG (Supporting Emotional Needs of Gifted), a national non-profit organization with programs that support gifted individuals and the parents, educators and health professionals that support them. He is the lead author of five books including A Parent’s Guide to Gifted Children and Misdiagnosis and Dual Diagnoses of Gifted Children and Adults.

This event is sponsored by the Northwest Gifted Child Association and Social & Emotional Needs of the Gifted (SENG), hosted by the Lake Washington School District and the Gifted Education Advisory Council (GEAC).

For questions, contact Pauline Bowie, 206-715-5261, Pauline@RaisingTheGifted.com

On Thursday, July 29th, Seabury School in Tacoma will be hosting Amy Price, Executive Director of SENG from 7-8:45pm at its middle school campus, 925 Court C, Tacoma, WA 98402.

Amy will do a general presentation on characteristics of gifted children with resources and tools for parents and educators. This event is open to the general public. From 8:15-8:45 we would like to give local district representatives/leaders an opportunity to talk about what is happening with gifted education in their districts.

This is going to be a unique opportunity for advocates of gifted ed in the South Sound to come together and create a stronger partnership with each other and SENG.

For more information call 253-952-5944.

Important Events on the Horizon

ABC Board — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 05:55:47 +0000

The month of March is winding down, but a number of important ABC events are just winding up.

The ABC Read-A-Thon kicks off March 26th and runs through April 4th. The Read-A-Thon is our largest fundraiser of the year. Where ever your Spring Break may take you, we hope you’ll bring along plenty of reading material for your kids and challenge them to read all they can. Ice Cream parties, gift certificates, and much more are on the line for out participants. For more information about the Read-A-Thon, including our rules and extra pledge sheets, please be sure to read all about it on our website.

On April 15th, ABC is joining with SENG, the national organization dedicated to supporting the emotional needs of gifted, to share a webinar titled “Navigating the Quest for Help: Understanding Your Gifted Child’s Puzzling Behavior.” Puyallup parents are invited to join us at Stewart Elementary at 7:00 to view the webinar and discuss what we hear with other parents in your situations. For full details and to reserve your spot, see here.

Stewart was selected as the site of our discussion because the QUEST Regional site currently hosted at Meeker, serving students from Stewart, Karshner, and Meeker elementaries, will be moving to Stewart beginning in the 2010 – 2011 school year. Meeker has been an amazing host school for our students for a number of years, but physical limitations have forced a move. The number of kids who need highly capable services has grown beyond what Meeker can accomodate. Mrs. Miller and Mrs. Franks will bring their years of experience teaching highly capable students along with them as they join our kids in making the move to Stewart. Mrs. Hoban, Principal at Stewart, worked with our highly capable students during her time at Meeker, and is looking forward to working with all of us on making the move a success.

A little bit further out, SENG has recently committed to bringing their national conference to Seattle in July of 2011. Some ABC volunteers have already met with SENG representatives to begin the planning process and we’re very excited about working with other gifted advocates from around the region to make this conference a valuable experience for you and your children. ABC has been looking for ways to improve the services we can offer our parents, and we’re looking to introduce some SENG concepts and tools to you as we build toward next year’s national conference.

Thank you for your support of ABC, and our highly capable students. We welcome each of you to participate with us as we continue to support excellence in the Puyallup School District, and increase awareness of the needs of our academically talented students.

Important Dates for Highly Capable

ABC Board — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 06:10:53 +0000

The next few weeks are packed with important events for QUEST and PAGE families. Please take a minute to look at what’s coming up. More information about each of these events can be found on our website, www.questabc.org.

February 9th – Puyallup School District Operations Levy ballots due.
February 5th – Gifted Education Day in Olympia
January 28th – QUEST Open House at Maplewood
January 26th – QUEST Open House at Shaw Road
January 23rd – ABC Pool Party at Rogers
January 21st – Puyallup School District Operations Levy Ballots are Mailed
Right Now - Your chance to let the District know what you believe their budget priorities should be.

The District Needs to Hear from You

ABC Board — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 05:56:53 +0000

The Puyallup School District is currently soliciting student, parent, staff, and community feedback on budgeting priorities for the 2010 – 2011 school year. Highly Capable funding is a big part of this survey. It is extremely important that the families of highly capable students be heard from. This is what the District website says:

The Puyallup School District would like to obtain the opinions of staff, parents, and community members on their priorities for district activities through an online survey. Your Puyallup School District Cabinet, Superintendent, and School Board of Directors will use the survey results as an advisory prioritization of budget items to better understand your overall priorities for 2010-11 budget deliberations.

The survey is available by clicking this link: http://www.puyallup.k12.wa.us/ourdistrict/financials/1011Budget/BudgetSurvey.cfm

Please take a few minutes of your time to follow the link, view the information provided, and answer the survey. It is essential that highly capable families participate in this.

Have you written the Governor yet?

ABC Board — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 01:18:20 +0000

Received from the Northwest Gifted Child Association:

GOVERNOR DELETES GIFTED EDUCATION FROM THE SUPPLEMENTAL BUDGET!! PARENTS MUST SPEAK UP!!

It appears that the next legislative session will be one of great peril for highly capable programs. Under the Supplemental Budget proposed by the Governor on December 9th, funding for highly capable programs will be suspended for the school year 2010-2011.

NWGCA is asking you to write or email the Governor and your three legislators, asking them to fund gifted education in the Supplemental Budget. Contact information provided below. This is what I wrote to my representatives:

Honorable Legislators:

As you are working on the Supplemental Budget, please fund gifted education for the 2010-2011 fiscal year. These children are the raw material that we will need to propel the US successfully into the economic and ethical global future.

The education system will lose $5 for each $1 the state fails to fund in this fiscal year. Local districts have been contributing $5 for each $1 the state has spent on gifted education over the last decade. Districts cannot continue to subsidize the state’s primary constitutional duty in these difficult times.

State failure to fund gifted education for the 2010-2011 year will have extraordinary long-term negative effects on the programs serving our state’s most talented learners, placing those children in learning “limbo”, This limbo will gravely impair their ability to compete with their intellectual peers from countries who are spending real dollars to prepare their most talented learners to become the scientists, engineers, physicians, and teachers of the future.

Not investing in gifted education is extremely short-sighted. These children are the raw material that will be used to propel the United States successfully into the economic and ethical global future.

It does not make sense to suspend highly capable program funding only one year before such programs are scheduled to become a mandated part of basic education under ESHB 2261. It will be more costly, as well as detrimental to students, for these programs to be restarted in September 2011.

The Quality Education Council is going to recommend to the Legislature that the new definition of basic education be implemented in September 2011. They support the report of the Funding Formula Technical Working Group.

The recommendations of the FFTWG contain a provision for a “hold harmless” which will guarantee districts no less than the amount they receive for highly capable programs in the 2010-2011 school year. If there is no funding for these programs in 2010-2011, as the Governor proposes, then this means that there will be no foundation for gifted funding under the provisions of ESHB 2261.

The Governor is mandated to produce a supplemental budget. Each house of the Legislature also prepares a supplemental budget. We are going to have to work hard with legislators to make sure that highly capable funding is a part of their proposed supplemental budgets and that it appears in the budget they pass. This is going to take concerted effort on the part of all gifted advocates in the state.

There are two prongs to this effort.

First, the three gifted groups in Washington, NWGCA, WAETAG and the Coalition ask that you write or email the Governor and your legislators as soon as possible requesting that highly capable programs be funded in the supplemental budget. Gifted students need these programs in order to be successful in school and life. Districts will have no incentive to spend local dollars on gifted programs if the state does not provide their share of the funding.

EMAIL THE GOVERNOR

PLEASE WRITE TO ALL THREE OF YOUR LEGISLATORS AS SOON AS POSSIBLE. HAVE YOUR STUDENTS WRITE THEIR OWN LETTERS.

Addresses for Representatives can be found through their web site

http://www.leg.wa.gov/House/Representatives/Pages/default.aspx

Addresses for Senators can be found through their web site

http://www.leg.wa.gov/Senate/Senators/Pages/default.aspx

If you don’t know who your legislators are, go to

http://apps.leg.wa.gov/DistrictFinder/Default.aspx

Craft your letter carefully and make it as succinct as possible. Introduce yourself as a constituent in the first paragraph. State your case. Make your request. Offer to provide more information and contacts if requested. Ask for a response. Thank your legislator for his/her time and attention.

Second, plan to be in Olympia on February 5, 2010 for Gifted Education Day in Washington. We need as many people there talking with their legislators about the need for gifted programs as humanly possible. More information on Gifted Education Day will be forthcoming when we have our plans firmed up. Superintendent Dorn is scheduled to speak to the group.

Marcia Holland, President
Northwest Gifted Child Association

Bad News for Gifted in the Governor’s 2010 – 2011 Supplemental Budget

ABC Board — Sun, 13 Dec 2009 06:59:42 +0000

This message was received from the Washington Coalition For Gifted Education, our lobby for Highly Capable Education in Washington State. ABC is a member of the Coaltion. Comments or questions can be sent to wagifted@earthlink.net or barbaragmaurer@yahoo.com. If you wish to have your name added to their mailing list, send a notice to wagifted@earthlink.net.

This message contains three parts.

1. Supplemental Budget

In her initial Supplemental Budget for 2010-2011, Governor Gregoire proposes to suspend $7.4 million of 2010-11 highly capable funding.*

The Legislature will also propose a version of the Supplemental Budget after January 11. Gifted education has strong supporters in the Legislature and we will work closely with them on the issue of highly capable funding.

To make known your support of highly capable funding send the Governor a message through her web site http://www.governor.wa.gov/contact/default.asp or the hot line 1.800.562.6000.

In a situation like this, it is the sheer number of messages, not the weight of your arguments, that will count. Make your message simple: “I want you to fully fund highly capable programs in the Supplemental Budget,” or “Do not suspend highly capable program funding in the Supplemental Budget.”

After the Legislature convenes we will be requesting you to contact legislators about both the budget and the implementation of the provisions of ESHB 2261.

2. Gifted Education Day, February 5, 2010

We need as many people in Olympia on Feb. 5 as is humanly possible, prepared to talk to legislators about the needs of gifted students. Organizing has begun and more information will be sent out soon. Please prepare to join us in Olympia!

3. Coalition Meeting

The Coalition will meet on January 7 at the Kohlwes Administration Center, Renton School District. to work out the details of Gifted Education Day and other items. Mark your calendar and please plan to join us. A reminder and agenda will be sent out closer to the date.

*To see the actual budget proposal, go to http://www.ofm.wa.gov/budget10/bills/default.asp and select operating 2010 supplemental. Highly capable is on page 168.

November Update – Advocacy Edition

ABC Board — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 08:34:58 +0000

There are a number of important events rapidly approaching that you need to know about, so we’re writing a special advocacy update to bring you up to speed.

The Puyallup highly capable programs did very well in the face of last year’s financial challenges, but that doesn’t mean that we can be complacent. Discussions are underway in Olympia about how to proceed with the implementation of last session’s education reform legislation, and we need to make sure that highly capable is included in those discussions.

Further, the Puyallup School District will seek approval in February of a programs and operations levy to replace the current expiring levy. A special kick off rally will be held next week to begin preparations for the campaign in support of the levy, and everyone is welcome to join. Highly capable could also use a voice on the citizen’s committee working to coordinate support of the levy. If you think you might be interested in serving on the committee, or have questions about what it may entail, please contact ABC and we’ll pass your information along.

To learn more about what’s needed at the state and local levels, as well information about how to take advantage of matching contributions to double the value of your donations to ABC, please see what’s been posted to our website at www.questabc.org:

Ice Cream Social: Volunteers needed!

Amy Prezbindowski — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 05:20:50 +0000

We are gearing up for our first awesome family event, the ever popular Ice Cream Social on Thursday, Oct 22nd from 6:30 – 8:00pm. To ensure a successful event, we will need some help scooping ice cream and distributing toppings . If you don’t mind helping out, contact Christine Holland at (253) 840-3340 or at thenaturalchoice@juno.com . Thanks for your support!

QUEST Regional Teachers Announced

ABC Board — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 01:20:14 +0000

The teachers for the QUEST Regional program were just announced a few minutes ago. Though the announcement was just made public, these teachers have already undergone a significant amount of training to help prepare them to teach classes of highly capable students, and they will continue to receive additional training throughout the school year. Teachers of the Clustering Potential second grade classes were not announced, but those teachers have also been receiving additional training over the summer and will continue to receive additional enrichment opportunities during the year.

ABC is glad to welcome the newest members of the QUEST team, and to welcome back the returning veterans of our QUEST classrooms. We’re look forward to a very successful 2009 – 2010 school year.

Brouillet 3rd/4th……..Leslie Raymond
Brouillet 5th/6th ……..Lisa Darling-Gower
Pope 3rd/4th …………Janelle Burger
Pope 5th/6th …………Kelley Lee
Zeiger 3rd/4th ………..Jennifer Beck
Zeiger 5th/6th ………..Gail Lovering
Sunrise 3rd/4th ………Marcia Case
Sunrise 5th/6th ………Renee Barkley
Shaw Road 3rd/4th…..Susie Turner
Shaw Road 5th/6th ….Barb Weir
Meeker 3rd/4th ……….Lanita Miller
Meeker 5th/6th ……….Jodi Franks
Maplewood 3rd/4th …..Ann Schumacher
Maplewood 5th/6th …..Erik Gonzales
Northwood 3rd/4th ……Heather MacMaster
Northwood 5th/6th ……Kelly Newbrey and Dave Williams