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Welcome Genesee Hill Elementary Families!
It is hard to believe a new school year is already upon us. Whether you are new to GHE or a returning member of our community, we are excited to have you with us this year. Emerging from the pandemic, we spent our last year focused on re-connecting our community in person. This year, we are building off that strong foundation with The Year of Belonging. Your new board has already been hard at work. With guidance from our parent survey last fall, teacher survey, multiple listening sessions for both staff and families, we have developed our PTA goals for this year. With your engagement we will:
- Help foster stronger GHE teacher and family partnership through increasing trust and respect of educators while soliciting and valuing family voice/expertise and increasing families’ sense of belonging at GHE.
- Help to build a welcoming and respectful learning environment that promotes inclusion by helping design a tool to monitor systemic incidents that impact our student’s learning and GHE staff working environments.
- Increase PTA General membership’s participation in local and state advocacy opportunities that are centered on supporting student education.
Furthermore, we recognize that this work must be guided by respect of teacher and families time limitations, inclusive of all voices, and equitable for all students, with a focus on our most vulnerable community members. These principles will shape our work as we look to help each of you feel welcomed and find meaning in your PTA membership.
In fact, we're often asked, what does belonging to the PTA do for me and my child? As a board, we believe that in order for community building to work, we each have to find meaning in it. We have seen that PTA membership provides:
- A voice (and vote) on how we spend our resources to support programs, specialists, and student experiences at GHE.
- An active impact on guiding our collective voice on advocacy issues.
- Participation in building an inclusive and welcoming culture that centers your child’s needs
- Access to relevant resources for you and your child.
Most importantly, you become part of a community network with other families who share common interests and concerns. This network provides support, advice and a sense of community. Together, we can create a community that helps to raise our kids and strengthen our school and broader West Seattle community.
We are thrilled to kick off another year together. We look forward to hosting our Month of Listening in October with repeating the parent and staff surveys. Additionally, we have our Dandelion weeding event on October 7th and our first General Membership meeting on October 16th 6-8pm in the cafeteria. We will have a NEW format for our general membership meetings and we hope each of you will join us for connection, snacks, and community building.
There is no wrong way to PTA,
Michael and Lia, co-presidents
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