Our school has been through a very chaotic year and some change. We have seen our student, parent, staff and beloved teaching staff decimated by neglect and outright hostility. We have seen people we once thought of as allies treat us like the ugly girl friend being dumped for greener pastures and our journey likened to a roller coaster ride that it was time to leave.
Yet, we still stand strong, our heads unbowed to anyone.
NO ONE is going to make us feel like second class citizens or dismiss our worth and our community.
Through all the chaos, the Parent Staff Association has been there. We hosted Buenos Dias Cafe once a month. We helped our teachers buy supplies for their classrooms. We donated some of the funds you helped raise to some of our families most in need at Thanksgiving and Christmas. And, at the end of the year, we gifted ALL of our teachers and staff with a $100 Christmas bonus as a “Thank You!” to our loved teachers and staff as the CoOp booted us from their world.
I suppose I should introduce myself. I am James Burk, the Treasurer of the PSA. I volunteered to be on the PSA last July because I could no longer stand by and let others shoulder the burdens I could see piling up. From the moment I took over as Treasurer, I have worked to ensure that the money the PSA raised was dedicated to OUR teachers and OUR school. When I took over, we had no way to spend OUR money without permission from the CoOp. We had teachers that had been waiting months to get reimbursed for money they spent out of their own pockets to enrich their classrooms. I found a way to to get that money flowing again and reduced months long waits for reimbursement to less than a week in many cases.
As it became clear that the CoOp was going to abandon us, our PSA President Patty Baca, PSA Vice President Stefanie Kurtz-Harris, myself and others worked tirelessly to ensure that the CoOp didn’t steal OUR money when they closed our campus. To that end, the PSA, like the school in general, started the process of reinventing ourselves. We incorporated the PSA and opened our own bank account under OUR control. No longer would be be hostage to someone else’s whims. Thanks to the tireless efforts of many people, we were able to open our new account in January 2020 with our old funds to the tune of $12,420.11.
We have continued the process of incorporation and are now waiting on the IRS to approve our application for tax exempt status.
Through all of this, we continued supporting our teachers and staff.
The PSA is continuing to reinvent itself. This website is just an example of that process.
Welcome to the Mountain View School Parent Staff Association!
