By-Laws

Mission:

SIPAPA exists to promote the continuity and expansion of language immersion and accessibility to foreign language curricula in the Palo Alto public schools.

Vision: By the year 2005,

    1. The Palo Alto Unified School District will implement language immersion programs for K-12, starting with the Spanish Language. Additional languages will be determined by community support.
    2. All students will have the opportunity to receive education/instruction in a foreign language.

Objectives:

Middle Term (1-5 years):

Gain PAUSD commitment for the language immersion program(s) as a standard educational alternative. This specifically means there will be at least one new kindergarten immersion class each year for each immersion language program.

The Spanish language immersion program will have at least one class per grade in Kindergarten through fifth grades.

Establish a long-term plan adopted by the School Board that will ensure a permanent location.

Short Term (this year):

Ascertain and implement what the School Board needs to support this program.

Develop an organizational structure to support efforts in:

  • Community outreach,
  • Advocacy,
  • Fund-raising,

- Cultural awareness and appreciation,

- Bringing together the immersion community through social and educational events.

Ensure there is a summer immersion program for current students.

Ensure there is a location for the immersion classes in the upcoming years.

Organization:

As an organization fully dependent on volunteer effort, SIPAPA cannot afford to have a cumbersome or bureaucratic hierarchy. Because the majority of efforts undertaken will be projects with set start- and end-dates, it seems to make most sense to have five types of responsibilities within the organization:

1. Organization Officers: to serve specific ongoing functions within the organization

  • President (or co-presidents), responsible for running SIPAPA meetings, and for officially representing the group (to the school, the district, the press, etc.).
  • Treasurer, responsible for financial matters (preparing budgets, matching expenses and income against budget, etc.).
  • Secretary, responsible for taking, maintaining, and distributing minutes of SIPAPA meetings.
  • Administrative Liaison Coordinator, responsible for coordinating efforts to help the District to administer the program; chairs the Advocacy and Liaison committees; Leads Board discussions to develop strategy for advancing language acquisition programs; works with President(s) to represent the group to the Administration.
  • Communications Coordinator, [a new position,] responsible for developing strategies to foster inclusive communication within the organization and all parents, convening and chairing a standing committee for “Internal Communications” (see below).
  • Past-president, acts as a one-year reference, to help the officers understand the history of decisions, to provide advice and assistance to the officers.

2. Room Representatives: to represent the needs of parents and teachers in each classroom

  • One Primarily Spanish-speaking parent and one primarily English-speaking parent from each room. These representatives to be elected in early-mid September to serve terms through the school year. These parents are responsible for:
  • Attending monthly SIPAPA business and strategy meetings;
  • Sampling or polling the parents in their rooms on important issues; Being available (e.g. by phone), to any parent they represent, to act as a proxy for members who cannot attend a business meeting, even if their views conflict.
  • Reporting to their constituency (parents in their rooms) about SIPAPA business on request (e.g. respond to “What was said about X?”);
  • Communicating urgent news from SIPAPA business meetings (e.g. regarding immediate needs for upcoming events, etc.) when the regular distribution of minutes or other communication would be insufficient or too slow.
  • These parents can serve as important members of the Communications Committee.

3. Committees: where the group identifies activities that will always need to be performed, e.g.:

    • Helping the school and district run the program;
    • Conducting the parents’ information meeting

    • For needs unique to the program;
    • Library resources subcommittee:
    • Grant-writing for a Spanish Language Library

    • Organizing cultural and educational activities (not necessarily for fundraising purposes);
    • Liaison with other immersion programs;
    • Parent education
    • Things like Spanish Lessons for parents, and other issues as well;

    • Developing and implementing strategies to extend language acquisition in PAUSD;
    • Developing, proposing, and implementing strategies and tactics to address District-focused objectives developed by the SIPAPA Board;

    • Translation of documents between English and Spanish (and vice versa);
    • Providing translation at meetings;
    • Ensuring organization activities are communicated to the membership;
    • Internal liaison with Spanish-speaking parents;
    • Providing continuity in this process;
    • Identifying central educational needs and coordinating with room parents on issues;
    • Defining and executing communication strategy – email, newsletter, etc.

  • Operations

  • Fund-raising

  • Community Outreach

  • Advocacy and Liaison

  • Communications

4. Task forces to be formed and dissolved as needed, e.g.:

  • Carnival
  • Specific grant proposals
  • Budgeting
  • Organization/Structure
  • School District long-term planning

5. Other Responsibilities

  • Historian/archivist
  • Liaison or alliances with other school district groups, e.g.,
  • PTA Council and local PTA unit(s) (owned/assigned by president)
  • Voluntary Transfer Program (VTP)
  • Special Education
  • Foreign language departments in secondary schools
  • School Board Watcher (owned/assigned by admin liaison)

Organization Officers and Classroom Representatives comprise the “Board.”

The five organization officer positions of president (or co-presidents), treasurer, secretary, administrative liaison coordinator, and communications coordinator will be elected positions. Nominations will be conducted with a nominating committee search, followed by a full-group vote. Elections will be held in April. Term of office will be one year, from July 1 to June 30.

Classroom representatives will be nominated and elected in by their classrooms in September, and will serve a term of office from September through June 30 of the same school year.

If a single president is elected for a term, he or she will automatically serve as past-president the following year. If two co-presidents are elected for a term, one or both may choose to return as past-president(s) the following year.

Committees and task forces will be formed from volunteers, and where an Officer is not designated (by responsibility) to chair a committee, each group should designate its own leader/coordinator after formation.

Meetings:

All meetings of the organization are open to the public.

Regular business meetings shall take place monthly throughout the school year with the schedule of dates and times published at least three months in advance. Special meetings may be called with one week’s advance notice.

An agenda for each regular business meeting shall be published one week in advance of each meeting. Time shall be provided at each regular business meeting for members to bring up new items for brief discussion.

Meetings of the membership will be run by the president or one of the co-presidents. These meetings require a quorum to be in attendance for the transaction of SIPAPA business. The quorum shall be set at 33% of the Board Meetings require the attendance of an interpreter, whose sole function is to translate.

Decisions to be made by the organization shall be voted on in scheduled meetings. Major decisions, including the annual budget, elections, and changes to this document, shall be made only after proposed changes have been published to full members (see Membership).

Any full member (see below) may cast their vote either at the meeting or via pre-arranged absentee ballots. A simple majority of those voting will be necessary and sufficient to pass all resolutions made by the organization.

Membership:

There shall be two classes of membership:

    1. Full Members

      2. The parent(s) or legal guardians of one, or more, students in the program are full members. Membership is automatic when a child is enrolled in the program. Each full member parent shall have one vote. These members are encouraged to participate in all activities of the organization. Further, officers and committee and task force chairs must be selected from this class of members.

    2. Associate members

Members of the community may apply for associate membership. Acceptance is automatic. Members of this class shall have no votes in the organization, but are encouraged to participate in all activities. Associate members may not serve in any elected position in the organization, but may be appointed to committees.

Modification:

Changes in this document must be approved by a simple majority of a quorum of members voting after it has been discussed at a meeting.

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