August 2008 Meeting Minutes

Moving Petersburg Forward Organizational Meeting Mintues Saturday August 23, 2008 Meeting started at 12:15 pm. In Attendance: Alumni from the PHS classes of '77, '80, '85, '97 and '98, Mayor Mickens and Past Superintendent Germaine Fauntleroy

Ie Meeting Agenda 1. Opening Comments and Welcome 2. Opening Prayer 3. Purpose of the Meeting: The Class of 1997 decided to come together to give back to Petersburg and to help bring Petersburg High School up to the level it was before; The Class of 1997 wants to involve all interested alumni, teachers, current students and citizens. 4. Main Topics o Create National Alumni of Petersburg High School organization o Eventually have regional alumni chapters (located all throughout the U.S. and various countries where alumni live) Examples: Petersburg/Central VA chapter, NC/SC chapter, ATL chapter, NOV AJDCIMD chapter, Tidewater, VA chapter, Korea/Germany chapter • These chapters could meet to gather ideas to bring back to the "hometeam" meetings in Petersburg AND could serve as support systems for graduates moving into various area to attend college, begin work or serve in the military. ** o Eventually we would like to have our programs and ideas to have an effect on the entire city of Petersburg (e.g. have educational & community outreach programs) Potential Programs: • A speaker bureau: Organize "In knew then what I know now" series featuring past alumni, speak at school assemblies, Occupation weeks (Ex: Lisa could bring engineers to PHS for national engineer week), etc. • Scholarship Funds (100 people giving $10 for $1000 scholarships) • Work Shadow/College Shadow programs, • Internships • College Tours D. Comments/Suggestions 1. Petersburg is moving in the right direction. Fort Lee has major plans taking place in the near future. The city is changing and moving forward.

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The City of Petersburg does have a planning commission with a 5 yr plan and that should not conflict with what we are trying to do.

2. There may be an Alumni Association from before integration (pre-I97S). • We may want to start an Alumni Association for the classes of 1975 and younger. • We should put together a list/document that lists all PHS alumni. We could go through the guidance department, list ads in the local papers and run an ad on the local cable network to gather this information 3. There are 34 graduating classes from the integrated high school. • We could get one person from each class to represent for their year and organize their class to donate/create scholarship funding. We could run ads in the paper/on the cable network and on various social websites to ask for prior alumni to come to the future meetings. • Ifwe get each class to donate $100 a year, we could have $3,400 annually to use for scholarships. 4. Tidewater schools have military units that have "Adopt a School" programs. In Petersburg, the sororities and fraternities are in the school system doing volunteer work. B.I Chemicals has a training/apprenticeship program with city students. • We could develop partnerships with these organizations and agencies. 5. There are several jobs available in the city, yet there is a lack of skilled students. In recent years, students have not been as advanced as past graduating classes. • For example, we now have only twenty kids in middle school taking Algebra vs. several classes of Algebra being offered in past school years or currently being taught in surrounding school systems. • We will research various programs to get computers donated into the hands and homes of city students. Not only is there a need for desktops in the home, but students should also have access to laptops (like other surrounding area students). 6. Initial Main Focus Points of the organization should be: • Mentorship • Speaker's Bureaus • Scholarship • Laptop Giveaways: Essay competitions for laptops, Get used laptops from military, businesses, and/or buy them III. Action items 1. Get incorporated - To get Alumni Association incorporated as a 501©3. • This will allow us to receive tax-deductible donations/contributions. We will begin researching the process to have a status report at the next meeting.

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Need to find a lawyer in the PHS alumni network to help out with the official filing of the necessary paperwork. Find speakers for November's National Education Week - We will have a follow up meeting in October to arrange alumni to come back and speak to various schools/classrooms during National Education week this Fall and during a later date in the spring Find more alumni via internet sites (such LinkedInlMySpacelFace Book) • By next meeting, have information for contact persons from each class present. Sources: websites, newspaper, guidance department and cable network June 2009 Scholarship - Will begin collecting funds to present a scholarship during 2009 PHS graduation. Scholarship could be added to current PHS scholarship endowment or given on its own Projects in the pipeline - Laptop give away and the mentoring program

Next meeting will be scheduled in October around PHS homecoming.