Category: Ongoing Announcements

Hello Dearest Readers,

PFLASA hosted the planned spring semester Zoom meeting. Then for the first time in the oral history parlayed to me, we exceeded capacity and people were locked out. I’m sorry.

I never want anyone to feel excluded and my intention this year with the couple online meetings was to be more inclusive. To this end, I’d like to explain a few things and how I could use your help.

First, the current bylaws require us to meet bi-monthly, in-person at 8:15 am on Fridays. My goal is to get them amended this year to allow for greater flexibility so this organization can grow and change. But since the bylaws also require all regular meetings to posted at the beginning of the school year, there is no way to change this mid-year.

Second, while the bylaws require us to meet as described above, they do allow for additional meetings. As you can understand, with an all-volunteer board and a robust meeting schedule, it is a big ask to have additional meetings, but since the limited feedback we get asks us to hold meetings at other times and online, I decided to experiment this year.

Third, PFLASA anticipated we might have a robust turn out for our Fall Semester meeting, so we bought a one-time webinar that allowed for 800 participants. We got less than 40. In my wildest dreams it never occurred to me that we would exceed our normal capacity of 100.

Fourth, due to a serious of serendipitous events, a couple of things happened that seem to be more appealing to all of you. One, I wasn’t sure what the content of our Spring meeting should be. But our fearless leader, Principal Crescenzi offered to have an admin or counselor as a guest which sounded great to me. Two, there were some miscommunications about getting the Zoom link out through the Raptor so we used the Google Grade-Level Groups and Naviance (the tool the school uses to communicate).

So with my acknowledged lack of technical prowess we headed into the 6 pm Zoom and the doorbell chimed repeatedly when I got a message from the Principal that people were saying they were locked out and I realized we had hit the limit. We did have some drop off after the counselor spoke so I understand that you really want to see the rock stars that work for LASA. Message received.

I wish I could say we will do it again but since this involves multiple people including LASA staff, I can’t promise that. The good news is that the information provided by Ms. McPherson is available on the LASA website: https://lasa.austinschools.org/academics/counselors/academic-resources

Finally, the help part I mentioned earlier. I can take wild guesses at what you want to hear and when OR you can email me at president@pflasa.org and tell me. I can’t promise I can or will honor any request made but since similar requests have largely remain unanswered your odds may be better than you expect.

Hoping everyone enjoyed the now-4 day weekend,

Ellen Stewart-Klein
PFLASA President