Happy New Year and welcome back to all our students and families!! I hope the Winter break was full of family fun and plenty of rest as the rest of the year will be busy and full of activities.

Kudos to our wonderful chairpersons and volunteers who so passionately provided time and energy to our events and activities in December. Our Caring Through Sharing program was another amazing success that provided us all with the opportunity to give from our hearts to those who so desperately need assistance and compassion. Thank you to every individual and every family who eagerly opened your hearts and added to your shopping list to make the season brighter to the many families represented in our program. We all can be proud of our participation in such a worthy cause.

Our Winterfest and the Book Fair events were well-attended and extremely well-run and everyone involved seemed to have a good time and enjoy the community and festive atmosphere of these collaborative events. For the second year in a row, we combined the timing of both events in order to gain some synergy between them and to enable people to do some holiday book shopping. We thought this was a great idea and we had some great results. However, we also found that in another year when we’re struggling to get broad community involvement in the activities, we had significant overlap with our volunteers between the two events which made for some scheduling challenges and many very exhausted but very passionate and energetic volunteers. As always, we welcome your thoughts and feedback regarding any of these programs so we can continue to improve and ensure we are providing what our general community desires.

Speaking of exhausted volunteers…it is important to note that we have a long-standing and popular program, Eager Reader, that is in danger of being dropped this year because we have no one to coordinate the program. Any parent who has been at Cascade Ridge for the past several years and who appreciates encouraging our kids to read, will know the loss of this program would be significant. Unfortunately, we have a large community of children (around 550) that accounts for about 340 families and we only have a core group of about 50 volunteers (including Board members) who coordinate the bulk of the programs throughout the year. It’s not an unusual situation for PTSAs where a small group of people repeatedly chair programs over multiple years, but it’s also a model where people get burned out and eventually programs begin to suffer. At some point, decisions need to be made to drop programs for a single year or more, and although it is unfortunate, it is sometimes the sad reality of organizations that are run completely by volunteers.

We SO appreciate the individual volunteering so many contribute throughout the year in the classroom and for various events. However, we also need to expand the breadth of volunteering among our whole community in leading and coordinating events. Without this expansion, we will not be able to continue to provide the high caliber quality and volume of programs and events that our school has come to expect and for which we have gained such a strong reputation for providing.

Coming in the second part of the school year we have a lot of educational, exciting, and interesting activities ahead for the school community. This month, we will have our annual Fine Arts Night on January 28th. It will be a great evening providing the opportunity to eat a tasty meal and mingle through the halls to enjoy all the amazing art that our students continue to create at Cascade Ridge.

We also have our second General Membership meeting of the year and we would love to have a big crowd on Thursday morning, January 27th starting at 8:30 right after student drop-off. As mentioned in recent Howlers, we will be voting for our Nominating Committee and reviewing, discussing, and voting on proposals for spending accumulated funds. We will also have a great parent education opportunity with “In the Kitchen with Kids: Burn a nd Scald Prevention” that will certainly provide us all with important information for keeping our kids safe in our house. You won’t want to miss this meeting!

Finally, don’t forget that staying “in the know” is easier than ever with our continually improving website and our member-friendly Howler and Coyote Connection.

Have a great start to 2011!

Tina Yerges, PTSA President
tinayerges@msn.com