Region Highlight – Suffolk Region
Welcome to fall! I hope this finds everyone healthy and well as we navigate our way through this different school year. My name is Julie Cannistra and I am the Region Membership Chair (RMC) for Suffolk Region. This is my third and final year as the RMC and I am looking forward to growing our membership in new ways. PTA Your way is about how YOU PTA. For me, having a child with special needs, it is all about advocacy and sharing as much information with my membership as possible. How do you PTA?
I wanted to tell you about two units here in the Suffolk Region who are doing amazing things to promote membership. The first is Bayview Elementary School in West Islip who currently have 266 members so far this year. Bayview recently created a mascot named Wesli. He attends all their PTA events and is beloved by the students and faculty alike. Their membership drive this year gave all families a Wesli magnet if you joined by a certain time and you were also entered into a contest they ran. Great job Bayview getting families engaged and your membership up!
Our other superstar membership school is currently leading Suffolk Region with 367 members. The Half Hollow Hills High School East PTA has been hard at work on this year’s membership campaign since the summer. Anticipating the challenges this year would bring, they prepared early to meet their growth goal of 10%. As an added incentive they created a raffle encouraging members to join by September 30. Their membership chair emailed a membership flyer to all of last year’s members as well as Hills East Alumni parents, who were happy to support them – Hills East Pride! Each member who makes an additional donation receives a personal email from Jeanmarie, their chair. So many of the parents were touched by this gesture. Their PTA president said “membership is so important to us because it grows our Hills East PTSA Community and strengthens our unit. We work hard to advocate for our families and faculty and we appreciate their continued support.”
Thank you to all the units in Suffolk who work hard every day for our children. We appreciate all that you do!