2021-04-25 EC Officer Election Timeline and Debunking Some Rumors

From the TJ PTSA President

Hi TJ Community,

I’ve gotten a few questions about how the election will work, and I also want to address a rumor or two. I’m glad people are eager to learn about the election. Everything is following a timeline that is defined in our bylaws and in the VA PTA training material for officer elections.

TL;DR (translation for Boomers: “Executive Summary”)

The TJ PTSA EC has not called for Dr. Bonitatibus or Superintendent Brabrand’s resignation.

The Nominating Committee was elected by the TJ PTSA membership (800 some eligible voters) so it is false to assert that one person hand-picked the recommended slate of EC candidates.

Remember to get your official TJ PTSA info from our website, our newsletter, or our Facebook page, or email the president or attend a PTSA meeting and ask your questions there.

Only 2020-21 TJ PTSA members get to vote in the election, so if you want to vote, buy a 2020-21 membership now. We’ll stop selling them shortly. Each membership gets one vote.

Don’t buy a membership for your kid if your kid doesn’t want to be a member and vote. Because I’m going to interview them and find out if it’s really them voting! Not really but who knows, I MIGHT! I won’t, but you never know. I could…

If you buy student memberships for your student, email the president from the email address that shows up for you in AtoZ Connect and include the child’s personal email (we can’t email school email addresses). The email will be hidden in AtoZ but will allow the child to vote.

We’ll post on the website as soon as we know dates when the Ballot will open and close. Thanks for supporting the work of the PTSA with your memberships.

If you want more details, read the Wall of Text Version below.

Nick Costescu, President

Wall of Text Version

Here’s the long version in excruciating detail.

As usual, on the internet, especially on social media, you need to take everything you read with a grain of salt, and understand that the more exciting or provocative a post is, the more likely the author has an agenda to push and they are trying to get you riled up so you’ll support that agenda. It’s not wrong to have an agenda or to drum up support for your agenda, but we need to be aware this is happening and maybe seek out the other points of view before getting too upset.

One false rumor I want to address is the allegation that the TJ PTSA is calling for the resignation of Dr. Bonitatibus and Superintendent Scott Brabrand.

The TJ PTSA has no such official position.

To adopt an official position, we’d need at least an EC vote and more likely a membership vote and then we’d post an official statement on our website, which, along w/the newsletter and our official TJHSST PTSA Facebook page are the only official TJ PTSA online communications channels.

If you don’t visit our website, please take a moment to become familiar with it, it’s the authoritative source and everything else, including the newsletter and Facebook content, flows from it.

It is true that some parents have called for those resignations. They do so as individual parents, or even as TJ PTSA members, or even as TJ PTSA committee chairs. Parents do not give up their rights to advocate and to free speech just because they volunteer for the TJ PTSA. But we have no official EC or TJ PTSA position calling for these resignations.

The other rumor is that one parent hand-picked the slate of recommended candidates. The process for electing the Nominating Committee is well documented in our Bylaws. You, the members of the TJ PTSA, either by voting for the Nominating Committee or by abstaining, indirectly selected the recommended slate of candidates for EC Officers. So if the folks you wanted to be on the slate didn’t make it, it’s because they didn’t have the support of you, the membership.

After the Nominating Committee report came out, per our Bylaws, we opened up self-nomination to all members, and we had four parents self-nominate. They will appear on the ballot for EC Officer positions alongside the recommended slate of candidates. From then on it’s a pure democratic election, so vote. The candidate for each office that gets the most votes wins.

The Election

Here’s the timeline of posts related to the EC Officer elections, along with a summary of each. All of these posts also went out in the newsletter.

I’m currently seeking guidance from VA PTA on the rest of our timeline and I’ll update this post when I have it, so this is all tentative for now.

  • 2021-05-<early May> 2020-21 TJ PTSA Memberships will no longer be available for sale. That means at that point each 2020-21 membership will be registered to vote and no one else will be able to vote. If a membership is not associated with an email in AtoZ connect, it cannot vote. The voting system relies on email addresses.
    • If you buy a student membership you must email the president from the email address that AtoZ has for you to let him know the email of the student you are buying it for (also make sure to assign it to the student when you buy it). Don’t use the student’s school email, we can’t send emails to that address.
    • I’m joking in the TL;DR section, but I do need to email the kid’s email because they aren’t able to enter it themselves so I need to make sure we have a valid email for them to vote or they won’t get the notice to vote or be able to vote. This has happened before and it’s not fun to go back and forth with parents trying to get a correct email address for a student during an election.
    • Each person can have at most one membership.
    • Don’t buy a membership for someone that doesn’t want to be a member. My kids don’t want to join the TJ PTSA so I didn’t buy them memberships.
  • 2021-05-<early May> 2021-22 EC Officer Ballot Starts.
    • We have to wait at least 30 days from the time the Nominating Committee issued its report (4/4/2021) before having the election. We’ll try to get it going around May 5 but it may be later, we’re also working the World Language and Music AP snacks and then the larger AP events at the end of May. Also end of year senior celebration and a May senior get-together. We don’t want to neglect the actual service work, it’s what most volunteers enjoy doing.
    • It also takes a lot of work to set up an online election compared to an in-person election like we used to have. We have to import a list of registered voters from AtoZ into ezvoteonline, and that’s not as easy as one would think, especially with the mysterious and unprecedented recent increase in student memberships 🙂 that have emails that have to be manually added in AtoZ. Boy those kids sure got interested in the TJ PTSA all of a sudden, good for them!
    • Actually setting up and testing the online ballot will take some time too.
  • 2021-05-<later in May>: 2021-22 EC Officer Ballot Closes.
    • I’d like to close the ballot before our May 20th general meeting so we can introduce the new officers, but we may do it later. With in person elections, you vote at the meeting and then the old EC is done, new EC is “in power”. I think we introduce the new EC at the following meeting. We don’t want to do this prematurely while we have events still happening (like the AP snacks at the end of May). We want some members of the new EC to be on the audit committee but they can’t be if they have signatory authority this FY.
    • Waiting on guidance from VA PTA to finalize all these dates.
  • 2021-06-31 2020-21 Fiscal Year Ends.
  • 2021-07-<mid July> Audit.

If you have any questions email me.
Sincerely,

Nick Costescu, President