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President's Message
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Archives
May 2009
By Patty Christiansen, President
The Happiest PTA District on Earth
WOW! Fourth District PTA is the happiest PTA district on earth!
Times may be tough, and budget cuts are deep. But, we still have much to celebrate.
Can I share what makes our district so great, using some famous Disney songs?
Deep in the hundred acre woods where Disneyland acres lay, you’ll find the enchanted neighborhood of public schools down our way. (Adapted from Winnie the Pooh)
There are 582 public schools in Fourth District, and 27 school districts. Why so many? Because we educate over one half million K-12 students. That’s more public school students than 21 of our US states have in their entire states!
Look for the bare necessities, the simple bare necessities…(Jungle Book)
We have about 420 unit PTAs, working with 21 council PTAs and a district board of about 50. We just chartered our first out-of-council juvenile justice school PTSA. We have about 152,000 members in Fourth District PTAs!
It's a small world after all...(It's A Small World)
In Fourth District, it is a small world, condensed into one county. Among our students, 44% are Hispanic, 35% are white. The rest are Asian, Pacific Islander, African-American and Native American. Almost a third of our students enter school without English language skills.
Yo ho, yo ho a pirate’s life for me. (Pirates of the Caribbean)
While there is a false perception that Orange County schools are flush, we will need to "pillage and plunder," because our school districts have been receiving $31 less in per student funding from the state than the statewide average.
Salagadoola menchicka boola bibbidi-bobbidi-boo…it’ll do magic, believe it or not, bibbidi-bobbidi-boo. (Cinderella)
We are seeing magic at Rio Contiguo Guidance Center PTSA, our juvenile detention high school PTSA. Our in-house booster group, comprised of Fourth District PTA board members, and PTAs throughout our PTA district have donated art supplies, sports equipment and uniforms.
In December, we asked our members with new computers to donate their old equipment. We’re using them to create a computer lab at Rio Contiguo so the students can access online classes.
Zip-a-dee-doo-dah, zip-a-dee-ay! My, oh my, what a wonderful day! (Song of the South)
It has been a wonderful time in Fourth District PTA. We have supported the arts with the creation of an arts advocacy plan and an arts advocacy training notebook.
Our A-Team (A is for Advocacy) hosts quarterly roundtables with big-name speakers, created a copy-ready Advocacy Communicator for unit and council advocates to hand out at meetings, hosts a two-day Sacramento Safari, and has a traveling Speaker’s Bureau to provide information to PTA councils.
We set up the Spanish Hotline in our office, to answer questions en español. We created a PTA Basics Handbook in Spanish, and we do regular small group trainings of our emerging Latino leaders.
We love to laugh..ha ha ha ha…. Loud and long and clear. (Mary Poppins)
The Pied Piper of PTA, Fantasy Island’s Tattoo (de PTA plane, de PTA plane), victims of the PTA flu, and nominating committee favorites “Abbie Always On the Board” and “Dana DoNothing Once She’s Elected” have all made guest appearances at our meetings.
We celebrate Founders’ Day with party hats, games and prizes. We honor Reflections winners at galleries and dinners. We party hearty at our costumed convention dinner.
Last year, we donated over 3.5 million hours to the schools in Fourth District—at market value, that’s almost $60 million in donated labor!
I hope you had a chance to see our supercalifragilisticexpialidocious district in action at convention. Two of the convention resolutions at general meetings were authored by Fourth District PTA and Orange Community Council.
Fourth District PTA is a large and hard-working PTA district, filled with wonderful volunteers. We accomplish so much in our schools, I suppose our theme song could be....
Heigh-ho, heigh-ho it’s off to work we go! (Snow White and the 7 Dwarfs)