Fourth District PTA members attend National PTA Conference

California swept this year’s National PTA advocacy honors, with both the State PTA and Capistrano Unified Council PTSA winning Outstanding Advocacy awards. Kim Anderson, Capistrano’s Advocacy Chair, was named the Shirley Igo Advocate of the year. The awards were presented at the National PTA Legislative Conference in Washington. The following is Kim Anderson’s report on that conference.

Capistrano Council voted to send Lisa Scharmann, council president; Barb Shangraw, immediate past council president and former legislative chair; Kathy Masters, federal legislative chair; and myself, to the conference.

There were approximately 220 attendees from across the USA, including 16 from California. We attended workshops on a wide array of topics, including Reauthorization of ESEA-NCLB, Working with the Media, Hills Issues and Training, Special Education and the Law, and What’s Happening in Washington?

We had an incredible day of advocacy on Capitol Hill. We met with our members of Congress – Ken Calvert, Gary Miller and John Campbell, and/or their staff, plus senior staff members of the Education Committee Chair, George Miller, and Ranking Member, Buck McKeon. We were honored to have National PTA President Jan Harp Domene and California State PTA President Pam Brady join us for those last two meetings. We advocated for full funding of Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) and changes to No Child Left Behind (NCLB).

This day also included the Awards Luncheon in a spectacularly beautiful room on Capitol Hill. In addition to the California awards, the Congressional Voice for Children Award was presented to Senator Ben Cardin (D-MD) and Representative Judy Biggert (R-IL). The National Congress of Parents and Teachers Founders Award was presented to Senator Ted Kennedy (D-MA) but it was accepted by David Johns, a Kennedy staffer, as the senator was out of town.

The next day we met with the US Dept of Education: the Special Education Office and a member of Education Secretary Arne Duncan’s staff. We spoke about a wide range of Special Education issues as well as the impacts of NCLB on children with special needs.

There is a lot of excitement and energy in DC right now with the new Obama administration that is planning to make education and other children’s issues a priority. This is particularly evident by the education funding that is included in the federal stimulus package, and every conversation included that topic.

National PTA is planning to move forward in a more compelling way, with a stronger vision, and has developed its first ever public policy agenda, (available at: www.pta.org).