Many thanks to those of you who made time in your busy schedules to attend our General Membership meeting on Thursday morning. For those who missed the meeting, we had a very busy agenda. First Mrs. Fowler initiated our "Coffee with the Principal" portion of the meeting with an open forum. We then started a very busy meeting that included the following:

• We reviewed our financial information and noted that the organization continues to be on track for budget expectations and for providing great programs for the school.
• We elected Pamela Franklin as our VP Community Relations for the balance of the year.
• We elected our Nominating Committee that is responsible for developing a slate of nominees for our 2012 – 2013 PTSA Board. This is a big responsibility and we appreciate the dedication and hard work of Jaycee Cooper, Laura Fortner, Pam Gross, Mary Jo Webb, and Tina Yerges. Thank you!
• We heard a presentation from Jake Kuper from the Issaquah School District and Alison Meryweather from Volunteers of Issaquah Schools (VIS) regarding the April 17 bond package. At the end of the discussion, we voted for the Cascade Ridge PTSA to both publicly endorse the bond and to give an additional $5,000 to VIS to support its passage.
• Finally, we also voted to give $2,700 to the school to negotiate the purchase of a lifetime subscription package for our new die cut machine.

It was a crazy busy, productive, and informative meeting, and we had an interested and engaged group. Many thanks to everyone who spent the time with us to be an important part of the process. If you’d like to join in the fun next time, mark your calendar now for the next GM meeting in April: Thursday, April 19th at 8:30 am, right after student drop-off.

As you probably already realize, we continue to be a very busy organization and things don’t seem to slow down; this is an indication of the important causes our membership supports throughout the whole year on behalf of all of our students. As always, we invite you to continue to engage and provide input and ideas so we will continue to focus on the right things to which our general community agrees and supports.

Have a great February!

Deanne King, PTSA President
deannewking@live.com