Submitted by Mary Jo Davis

1. Attending were Mary Jo Davis, Joy Burns, Marilyn Chong, Carrie Berkley and Barb Cey.

2. First we looked over the newsletter. Paula Muhs did a great job creating it I sent it out electronically on Sunday night. The copy I had was not the final copy and was missing Sandi Trosien's title (Instructional Services Coordinator) and Paula's email (pmuhs@umich.edu). I have made the final changes to the document and will have paper copies available at the general meeting tomorrow (March 20). I will be stopping by Community Education tomorrow to ask if we can have copies put in the racks at all the schools. I will also leave some at the library. If anyone can think of anywhere else we should put them, let me know. We would like to have another newsletter in May. (Paula, let everyone know what the deadline for submitting articles will be).

3. We discussed having a joint meeting with the Parents Who Care group. We will be asking Barb Saxton, the Associate Superintendent for Personnel, to speak on teacher hiring. All the ins and outs like who applies, who is hired, how are they reviewed, how are they tenured, how can parents either complain or praise teachers to administration would
be types of things the program would be about. Carrie is going to contact both Barb Saxton and the Parents Who Care group to try to set a date for a Tuesday evening in October. This meeting should appeal to many parents, even those who normally would not attend either group's meetings. This would be our kickoff meeting for the next school year.

4. Barb also mentioned that the MAGE conference will be Sept 30-Oct 2 in Grand Rapids and that they have some good speakers coming. She would like the REACH group to publicize the Destination Imagination organizational meetings which will be held in September. There will
also be a PIVOT conference in the fall which members might want to attend. Carrie will check Pleasant Ridge and Houghton PTA/PTOs to see if they have fall meeting dates established. Mary Jo will check with Woodland Meadows, Heritage and Middle School. The district calendar for 2001-2002 school year is being planned right now and should be set next month.

5. We discussed steering committee meetings and set Monday June 4 at 1:30 pm and Thursday August 16 at 1pm (both at the District Library) for our next two meetings. At the June meeting members should come prepared to discuss what jobs they would like to take on for the 2001-2002 school year. We can keep everything the same or shake things up a bit! At that time we should also try to set the rest of our fall general meetings.

6. Barb reported that K-6 placement for next year will include clusters at all schools. Marilyn is getting K-6 placement forms and Mary Jo is getting Middle School placement forms to have at the March 20 meeting. Most forms are due in April before our next general meeting. Mary Jo will discuss them briefly and then ask members who are familiar with them to stick around after the speaker to answer parents questions about how to fill them out.

7. A short discussion about REACH structure and MAGE affliation was held. Barb passed out information from MAGE (Michigan Alliance for Gifted Education) about how to become an affliate group. At the Washtenaw county level, it looks like W-CAGE (Washtenaw County Alliance for Gifted Education) has located officers and will be active again. I suggest that all the REACH members who wish to, join WCAGE so that we can have MAGE information and affliation without putting the burden on us to have an "official" organization. I am not ready to have by-laws and officers yet. I think the way things have been running have been working well enough to meet our goals. The consensus of those present was to continue as is for the next school year and then reevaluate. The steering committee will continue to be the most active members , with other parents attending events that apply to them. Comments from members not at the meeting are welcome and we can certainly discuss this again in June if there are strong feelings another way. Barb is going to check with Sandi Trosien about who the WCAGE officers are and when we should fill out membership forms.

8. Barb brought 5 great books that we can use for future book
discussion groups. I will be making up a sheet with a short description
of each on them . We will be asking at the next 2 general meetings if
anyone would like to do a summer book group.

To go back to the Reach homepage click on the link below:

REACH Home