MCCPTA Delegates’ Assembly Meeting Sept. 29, 2015
Submitted by Paula Sumberg
Each MCCPTA Board member and a few committee chairs reported (see attachments).
A guest from MCPS reported on the revised Child Abuse and Neglect policy.
1) MCPS Child Abuse and Neglect Policy Revisions (power point attached) Denise Bracalilliy-Schultz, MCPS
Training and background check requirements will change
1. By Oct. 2016 all 24,000 MCPS staff members will have received a 30 minute face-to-face training and 90 minute online training for recognizing abuse and neglect and following the MCPS reporting requirements.
2. All contractors in MCPS buildings with direct, uncontrolled, unsupervised access to students will be fingerprinted at the contractor’s expense and trained –the training for contractors is being built now
3. They are looking into the requirement for fingerprinting all parents who volunteer for Outdoor Ed overnights or other field trips where they have direct, uncontrolled, unsupervised access to students. Those parents would need to be fingerprinted only once for the length of their child’s education with MCPS.
4. Starting in January 2016, online training for all volunteer parents who have direct, uncontrolled, unsupervised access to the students will be mandatory (mostly Outdoor Ed and field trips)
5. Much needed and requested Qs and As are being developed regarding the new requirements and will be provided to all schools soon.
2) Notes from MCCPTA Board Member Reports
1. MCCPTA would like the PTSA’s to “determine what we think our PTSA success looks like” and send those thoughts to President Frances Frost. E.g high membership, well attended activities, etc.
2. We are in an Area with Poolesville, RM, Wootten and Rockville HS. Our Area Vice President is Vince Mickens. We do not have a Churchill Cluster coordinator-as far as I can tell from the meeting minutes from April 2015.
3. MCCPTA would like to know about the PTA activities in our cluster through the cluster rep. so they can share the ideas and best practices with other PTAs.
4. We need to focus our legislative efforts on raising the county budget for schools. The county council likes to say that they spend a huge amount of money on schools in relation to other programs, but the money is not all county money. State education dollars are combined with county money to reach that amount. MCCPTA feels that education money from the state should not be included in the amount if we are trying to determine how much of the county budget goes to schools. The actual percentage of the county money budgeted for schools has decreased.
5. The VP for Advocacy will be sending out “advocacy action alerts” to PTAs, and expects that they will be forwarded to the membership. She would like PTA members to establish relationships with County Councilman Roger Berliner and state delegates now, for future endeavors.
6. The deadline to comment on the new grade algorithm is 10/19/15. The BOE has determined that they will eliminate the final exams. There was no discussion of the new policy for eliminating the end of semester exams.
7. Next delegates assembly meeting is Oct. 27. They will be going over (line by line) the 2015-2016 Advocacy Priorities document. Draft is attached.
8. We approved the MCCPTA budget for 2015-2016. We will have an income carryover of about $14,000 into the 2016-2017 school season. PTAs are not under any obligation to spend down their treasury to avoid losing their non-profit tax status. That is a misconception held by many PTAs.