During my time on the EPTA board we had from schools from England, Belgium, Germany, Italy, Portugal, Spain, Turkey and Bahrain. My job as VP of Legislation was to stay informed of issues (which is a very broad topic) and then communicate with the EPTA membership. The other half my job was to communicate with members of Congress and The Department of Defense and DODEA officials. During my tenure, the military began one of its first major drawdown of troops from Europe back to the US. It quickly became evident the transition plan of moving soldiers and their families was putting many soldiers in great stress. I started two initiatives, The Quality of Education and The Quality of Life for our military families living abroad. With the support of my EPTA President, The Kaiserslautern Superintendent of Education for DODEA and a Military Colonel USAF, Ramstein Air Force Base I organized a committee from different military communities to meet and discuss what were the biggest issues the soldiers were facing in this drawdown. Now mind you, this drawdown meant these were soldiers that were going to be displaced from the military, mostly army. The three biggest issues that kept coming up were that, wherever that soldier and their family were going to…#1 What did the job prospects look like? #2 What was the availability of housing? #3 What were the schools like? So, now we knew what was causing stress for these soldiers and their families but what could we do? With the support of all of our EPTA’s, we started information nights. We asked for volunteers to come to the schools at night for an hour and represent your state as best you could. Research the answer to those three questions at least in the big metro areas and answer any questions the soldiers might have. The teachers that volunteered were unbelievable. And of course many parents stepped up to the plate. People were having friends send local newspapers to them from the area they lived that had job and home listings. One day I got called to the principal’s office. When I got there I was told there was a phone call for me. Shockingly, it was an aide for a representative of a member of the House Armed Services Committee. I was being called to see if I could come to testify before the committee because news had gotten back to the them that the drawdown wasn’t going as smoothly as they thought. Three days later, there I was sitting in front of the Committee in the Rayburn Bldg explaining how the drawdown was affecting the Quality of Life for our troops and their families and the program our EPTA had put in place. 1994 – 1996 President, EPTA To add a little bit more knowledge about EPTA. During my two years as President. I represented about 35 schools made up of about 42,000 members. My board consisted of four other executive officers and then about 20 other board committee chairs. As President, I recommended we maintain for our goals, The Quality of Life and Quality of Education. I felt any issue that may come our way we would be able to fit it under one of these categories. And, boy did that come true. Three things I’d like to highlight are…. First, DODEA appointed a new Director during my first year. And boy, did things change for our school system. Every year EPTA has a convention. Every year, The European Area Director attends as do all European Superintendents. In fact they use the time to hold their own meetings. They always attended our awards banquet and celebrated with us. And, the Director of DODEA has always attended. At my first year’s convention The Director brought all the Area and District Superintendents worldwide to our convention. And, the NPTA President was also present. Remember the list of attributes you wondered that we might possess to serve on this committee….and I had a convention to run with all the business items…. Motions and bylaws changes and resolutions…my biggest problem was taking care of all all the Superintendents telling me to tell the new Director I needed them because she was keeping them in meetings all day and night.
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