A Letter to Interested Parents

Call to Join CANDO

Hello Parents,
I am writing to you on behalf of CANDO, the parent advocacy group for gifted and high ability students of Batavia. We have an exciting year planned for CANDO and I hope you have received a flyer about CANDO during the elementary school curriculum nights. If not, please feel free to visit the CANDO website http://www.bataviacando.org/ for more information about who we are and the importance of CANDO this year.

Gifted education in Batavia (as well as Illinois) is underfunded and our school board is currently exploring a recommendation for expansion. Pick up a copy of Genius Denied if you are wanting to learn more about the lack of support for gifted. As a friend so eloquently stated, "No Child Left Behind means No Child Gets Ahead". At CANDO, we are counting on all parents to support the recommendation for expansion as our children desperately need programs that meets your child's need for challenging curriculum and enrichment (more about that later).

CANDO is much more than advocacy at the local and state levels, we are a group of parents who share the challenges of motivating gifted children and their (sometimes) disorganized approach to their school work, encouraging them when they finally face a project that is "hard" when things have always come so easy to them, helping navigate through the program or how to work successfully with their teacher. We also offer evening enrichment programs: casual coffee, game nights for the kids, author visits, guest speakers, and insights into community resources.

We have an active yahoo group where we share information frequently, including field trip dates and key school board meetings when gifted is the topic of discussion. We are a source of summer and enrichment opportunities as well as opportunities to learn about guest speakers on the topic of gifted parenting happening outside our District but locally (Naperville, St. Charles, etc.), and updates through IAGC at the state level (http://www.iagcgifted.org/).

CANDO cannot go on without all of your support and involvement at some level; I am a mother of two amazing boys and I work (more than) full time outside the home, but decided to chair CANDO last year because I had an amazing group of dedicated parents who are passionate about ensuring our students of higher ability receive the support they need on a daily basis. We accomplished great feats last year, and built a very strong bridge with our District administrators. But this is the year that counts. This is the year that Dr. Wright and the gifted committee will be asking the school board for the funding to expand the program to begin 2009-2010.

I wholeheartedly encourage you to become an active member of CANDO, for your children and mine and all of the future students of Batavia. I look forward to your contributions (we operate on volunteerism, there are not any membership dues or fees associated with CANDO). I hope to see you in September - please watch your e-mail for future information, and visit http://www.bataviacando.org/ often for updates. We'll also do our best to send out notices through backpack distribution, but all signs lead to an elimination of this process altogether for any outside community groups. Please forward this to any other parents who may benefit from CANDO and its resources, regardless of their child's participation in Challenge -- there are many parents of high ability students in K-2 out there that can become involved as well! Lastly, please don't hesitate to contact me if I can answer any questions at all.

Warmest regards, Ann Hejna(HWS and RMS parent)