PAC: what and why
by Tom Hobson, Co-op Parent

    As we scramble to get the new school year underway, concentrating on the minutiae of classroom arrangements, who's in charge of snacks, and setting our alarm clocks back to an earlier hour, we thought it might be a good time to take a step back and have a look at the bigger picture of our North Seattle Community College-affiliated co-op system's Parent Advisory Council (PAC) and its activities.
    For most of us, our contact with PAC is this newsletter and the annual raffle - PAC activities, indeed, but only two of the many benefits we receive through the work of this body.

Scholarships
     The societal and individual benefits of preschool can hardly be overstated. Study after study demonstrates that quality early childhood education is a strong indicator of a child's future academic success. Many of these studies show that even as early as kindergarten, there is a marked difference between those who have had preschool experience and those who haven't.
    Unfortunately, our public schools don't provide this important opportunity, leaving many lower income children without access to preschool education, forcing individual families to do without.
    One of the primary functions of your Parent Advisory Council (PAC) is to make the cooperative preschool experience available to those not otherwise able to afford it. Nearly 90 percent of PAC's annual budget is distributed to needy families in the form of scholarships.
    Our Scholarship Committee has a difficult job determining who qualifies for financial aid. At some level everyone feels like they deserve assistance, but our committee, working with NSCC staff and members of the community, make sure that only those who would not otherwise be able to attend a co-op receive assistance. Qualifying families may receive scholarships equaling up to 50 percent of tuition costs. Annually, some 40 to 50 families are assisted in this way.

Parent education and enrollment support
    With the other 10 percent of its budget, PAC provides a number of other important benefits to its member co-ops, including quarterly parent education seminars and lectures, featuring some of our area's leading experts on children and education. Past events have included such important topics as sibling rivalry, emotional intelligence, and the effects of television on our children's developing brains. Watch these pages for dates and subjects.
    PAC also supports co-ops by orchestrating the open registration to enroll new children, monitoring openings at individual co-ops and assisting those who need help to fill up those empty slots.

Kindergarten preparation
    As your child approaches the end to his or her preschool years, attention turns to the often complex and confusing world of kindergartens. PAC's Kindergarten Readiness Committee is responsible for producing comprehensive "Kindergarten Readiness" folders as well as generating kindergarten-related information for this newsletter. This information saves co-op parents incredible amount of time and energy by providing data and advice about their options for kindergarten.

Politics and communication
    The pressures and demands of work and parenting can often leave us time for little else, especially when it comes to keeping track of what those sneaky elected officials and policy-makers are up to. PAC's Political Action Committee keeps us informed of relevant political and social issues regarding children and education, letting us know about developments that will improve our kid's educational opportunities and calling us to action when the best interests of our children are threatened.
    The most elementary purpose of PAC, however, is to increase the quality of communication between all the NSCC co-ops. To that end, this newsletter and our web site (http://nsccux.sccd.ctc.edu/~parented) exist to inform you about important dates (e.g., scholarship deadlines, upcoming seminars and lectures, raffle information), disseminate the reports for the various PAC committees, and serve as a clearing house for ideas, solutions and techniques from other preschools.

.. . . And now back to resetting the alarm clock . . .