2022 Sacajawea PTA Award nominations

Nominations Open for Sacajawea PTA Awards

Deadline: Friday, May 27th

Each spring, Sacajawea PTA seeks nominations for our Golden Acorn, Outstanding Educator and the Roy Norman S.H.I.N.E. Award.  These awards celebrate the people in our community who have gone above and beyond to make Sacajawea a wonderful place for our students and families.  Please submit your nomination by Friday, May 27th.  Awardees will be announced the week of June 14th.

Golden Acorn Awards
Every year three deserving volunteers receive a Golden Acorn Award.  The Golden Acorn is a Washington State PTA award given by local PTAs recognizing exemplary and outstanding volunteerism and service to the PTA. Golden Acorn nominees should be active volunteers in PTA, our school and/or our Sacajawea community.

Outstanding Educator
This award is given to an individual (teacher, instructional assistant, staff member, administrator -- anyone on staff at school!) who has made significant contributions to our school and community and has helped to enhance the educational, social-emotional outcomes and well-being of our students.

Roy Norman SHINE Award
We are proud to continue the tradition of presenting the Roy Norman SHINE Award, in honor of Roy Norman, Doreen Norman’s late husband. Roy exemplified the SHINE values that are at the heart of our Sacajawea community (safe, helpful, inclusive, neighborly, engaged). Nominees for this award will also have demonstrated SHINE values in how they have supported our school and community.

Please Submit your nomination online by Friday, May 27th.

Thank you!

Sacajawea PTA Awards Committee
(Karen Murphy, Laura Riley & Charlene Shanahan)

Upcoming SCPTA Listening Sessions with Superintendent Dr. Brent Jones

The Seattle Council PTSA is hosting a series of community engagements with Seattle Public Schools Superintendent Dr. Brent Jones. Please join us to share your voice with our district leader about safe and welcoming environments.

To register, please use the following links. ASL and closed captioning will be available at each listening session. Interpretation in each of the top 5 languages (Spanish, Somali, Vietnamese, Cantonese, and Amharic) is available as well. All listening sessions are 5:30PM to 7:30PM on the dates listed.

• April 19: Native families

• April 21: Multilingual families

• April 25: Black families (Interpretation in Oromo and Tigrinya available in addition to the languages listed above)

• May 2: Students with IEPs/504s

• May 5: Students

• May 9: Special Education families

• May 16: General public

BLM at School Year of Purpose: Louise B. Miller and BASL

Dear Sacajawea Community,

Versión en Español

Public harassment can leave you feeling helpless and afraid whether you are a witness or the target. The organization Right To Be (formerly Hollaback!) offers free interactive trainings to teach you how to intervene safely to stop harassment. Parent Equity Team is encouraging Sac families to save the date for the Bystander Intervention to Stop Xenophobic Harassment workshop hosted by Right to Be on April 20 at 5:00 p.m. Sign up here: https://zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_cTRjIlvKR7Wft3xD6S-6UA.

Our goal is to participate as a community to learn the skills needed to safely stop hate crimes and harassment. Parent Equity Team will also be hosting a Sacajawea-specific community debrief session, so we can review and discuss what we have learned together—keep an eye out for more details!

Louise B. Miller: A force for educational equity

This month we are thinking about the ways many different identities can intersect in each of us. We are celebrating both Women’s History and Deaf History Month, and highlighting an early pioneer of school desegregation, Louise B. Miller. In 1952, Ms. Miller, a Black mother, grew frustrated that she had to send her three deaf sons to a school far away from their home in Washington, D.C. She filed suit in federal court against the D.C. Board of Education to end the segregation that kept Black deaf children from being educated within the district.

On July 3, 1952, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia ruled in her favor in Miller v. Board of Education of District of Columbia, stating that Black students could not be sent outside a state or district to obtain the same education that white students could have within the state or district. Louise’s victory is considered a precursor to the 1954 Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka.

Deaf schools were segregated throughout the country for decades, leading to the development of Black American Sign Language (BASL), a dialect of American Sign Language (ASL). Even though the legal segregation of Deaf schools has ended, about 50% of Black deaf Americans use BASL today. Nakia Smith, a Black deaf woman, has created videos that show some of the differences between BASL and ASL, including a preference for two-handed variants of signs. A video of Nakia and her grandfather signing together went viral, and she has continued to create videos that highlight BASL and its evolving history. 

What can you do to learn more?

Talk to your students about the info presented above.

If you have 2 minutes, read Black Deaf Culture Through the Lens of History

If you have 3 minutes, watch How To Sign In BASL (Black American Sign Language)

If you have 5 minutes (or more!), read BIPOC Deaf Women in History

If you have 8 minutes, watch Celebrating and preserving Black American Sign Language

Dig Deeper

National Black Deaf Advocates
Louise B. Miller Memorial Project
#Deafwoke Podcast

Check out these books

• Black Deaf Lives Matter: A fun coloring & activity book about Black Deaf life, history, culture & sign language, by Lissa D. Ramirez-Stapleton

• My Deaf Friend Can Do Anything You Can Do, by Tanesha Ausby

• Books to deepen your understanding of Black and Black Deaf experiences

With gratitude,

Sacajawea’s Parent Racial Equity Team
equity@sacpta.org

Black Lives Matter T-Shirts Still Available

The PTA Equity Team still has youth and adult sizes available of this year’s Black Lives Matter T-Shirts. if you didn’t get yours or want to get one while supplies last, please reach out to John at jdelfeld@gmail.com. These are open to everyone, scholarships available.

The Sacajawea Hiring Committee Needs You

With our school budget process in full swing and anticipated staffing changes next year, we need trained parent representatives for our upcoming hiring committees. The hiring process for 2022-23 starts in April, and the next monthly hiring training is online on Tuesday April 5th, from 4:00 – 5:30 PM.

In order to participate in a hiring committee, you must have engaged in this training within the last 3 years. If you haven’t completed the hiring training in the last 3 years and would like to participate, please sign up for this Interview training.

Let Principal Friesen know if you complete the training so she’ll know you are interested in being on a hiring team.

Register for the training on the SEA website.