At last week’s Santa Monica-Malibu Council of PTAs annual Installation and Awards Breakfast at the Border Grill in downtown Santa Monica, next year’s slate of PTA Council Officers, including incoming Council President, Laura Rosenbaum, were introduced.
Since moving here from Cleveland, Rosenbaum has devoted her volunteer activities to local schools. In the financial services industry, she most recently has been “moonlighting” as co-president of the SMASH PTSA and co-First V.P. of Communications for PTA Council.
As President of Santa Monica-Malibu PTA Council, Rosenbaum will work to unite parents, teachers, students and the community at large to ensure that children are recognized as everyone’s special interest.
She said, “The student of today is called on to be an adult in a more complex and global world than ever before. It will be through the combined effort of all of us, joining together with one voice on behalf of every child, in accord with the PTA mission, that our children — our community’s children — will be successful and important members of the world we will all inhabit,” Laura said at the breakfast.
Rosenbaum replaces two-term president Maria Rodriguez in June. Rodriguez’s presidency has been marked by activism. She led a legion of PTA volunteers through a successful advocacy effort for 2003’s Measure S campaign for school funding. In 2004, PTA Council partnered with Community for Excellent Public Schools in its signature-gathering campaign to qualify the Excellent Public Schools Charter Amendment on the city ballot, which led to a historic funding agreement between the City of Santa Monica and Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District. And, recently, the Santa Monica-Malibu PTA Council, under Rodriguez’s leadership, provided key financial and logistical support for the statewide Caravan for Kids, which culminated in a PTA rally on the steps of the State Capitol in Sacramento.
Rodriguez’s presidency has also seen improvements in communication, including the launch of the PTA Council website www.smmpta.org. and its community newsletter — the third issue of which is being distributed this week as an insert in Santa Monica and Malibu newspapers, to students district-wide, and will be available in public locations throughout both cities.The Santa Monica-Malibu Council of PTAs has worked toward substantive goals in the following areas: regular monthly meetings and reports to enhance communication among the PTA Council, parent leaders, PTA units, the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District administration, the Santa Monica-Malibu Classroom Teachers Association, SEIU and the SMMUSD Board of Education; organized School Board candidate forums with the League of Women Voters; successful parent/school partnerships among District administrators, site principals and parent leaders; the district-wide Reflections arts competition; parents’ voter registration drives; support for juvenile camps for at-risk youth and safe graduation celebrations at Santa Monica High School, Malibu High School and Olympic High School; scholarships for Santa Monica High School and Malibu High School graduates; co-sponsorship with The Education Foundation of Santa Monica-Malibu Summer School Adventure program.
