Cultural Arts
A new school year means new opportunities to share your artist's work! Art offers children a unique means of expression, capturing their passions and emotions and fostering the exploration of new ideas, subject matter, and cultures. Each year, we invite students from our district to share their creative talents by entering our three annual contests.
St. Tammany District PTA celebrates with Gray Hernandez, who was a National PTA Reflections Award of Merit Winner in the 2018-2019 Photography Division!! Gray was a student at Woodlake Elementary when his entry titled " Mom: My Assistant Principal, My Hero" won in the Primary category.
A message from our LAPTA President
Dear Members,
Thank you for your continued support of PTA at your local, district, and state level. Members of the LA State PTA Board of Directors met in December to discuss the future of the LA State PTA. Last year we changed the way we do the State Children's Banquet, Awards Night, and our Educator of Distinction ceremonies by providing financial support to the District PTA Boards to host these events. From the response received the majority of our members were in favor of the new way of celebrating our students, members, their PTAs and families. This year we thought we would add a new twist and presented a Family Focus Day, however, due to low response we decided to cancel this event.
The Board members concluded that the primary focus of our local members is being active in their units and supporting their families and individual schools. Having come to this conclusion, the Louisiana PTA BOD is refocusing our efforts by exploring different approaches to best serve our members. The PTA value of Commitment (as defined by National PTA) is one guide: We are dedicated to children’s educational success, health, and well-being through strong family and community engagement, while remaining accountable to the principles upon which our association was founded.
In support of this value, this spring we will be hosting two Stem + Science Festivals, sponsored by Bayer, and funded by the grant we received from National PTA. Science Festivals are a fun, family-friendly event that sparks passion for STEM through activities and experiments for both students and their families.
The National PTA Legislative Conference (LegCon 2020) is March 10-12, 2020 in Alexandria, VA. This year the LA PTA BOD is inviting 4 interested local unit members to attend this conference and network with fellow PTA advocates, meet with policymakers, hear PTA advocacy success stories, and learn how to shape public policy. Registration, transportation, lodging, and meal allowances will be funded by the LAPTA. More information is available at https://www.pta.org/home/events/National-PTA-Legislative-Conference. If you are interested please contact me at president@louisianapta.org I also encourage local units to consider applying for the travel grants that LA State PTA will be offering for the National PTA Convention in June 2020 – this is a special opportunity to see PTA in a whole new way.
A last note -- we will still have a mandatory Louisiana State PTA meeting in May to address business and bylaws. This meeting is required in order for all of our PTAs to be allowed to function as non-profit organizations in the state of Louisiana
Respectfully,
Shannon M. Howard
LAPTA President
everychild.onevoice
Visit YOUR NATIONAL PTA WEBSITE -- YOU'LL BE glad you did!
While you are there, check out the RUN YOUR PTA tab! It has information that can make a BIG difference in the success of your unit. Apply for the grants, sign up for the Local PTA Leader Kit, take an e-learning course, and see what helpful information is located in the Marketplace. So, take your time, look around, and learn some more about PTA.