District PTO Chair, Former Board President to Lead St. Charles School Summit

St. Charles community residents Julie Feldsien and have stepped up to lead Summit 303, a series of citizen-led community engagement meetings. Summit 303 is designed to bring stakeholders together to address the challenges and opportunities facing District 303 and propose solutions for the future needs of students.

Feldsien and Nowling, along with a small planning team of community volunteers will design, organize and conduct the meetings which will result in recommendations to be presented to the Board of Education. The Summit 303 process is set to begin with its first public meeting on Wednesday, Feb. 1 at 7 p.m. The entire community is encouraged to attend this meeting being held in the , 525 S. Randall Rd.

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Julie and her husband Tom have lived in South Elgin for 10 years and they have two children in District 303 schools. Their daughter is a freshman at  and their son is a sixth grader at. Julie currently works as a substitute teacher and also serves as a volunteer in the LRC at . She is chair of the District 303 PTO. Julie enjoys being involved in the District and discovering how our community works together regularly to provide the best possible education for our children.

Scott and his wife Dana have lived in St. Charles since 2005. They have two daughters who attend . Scott is a former District 303 Board of Education member and served as President of the Board from 2009-2011. Scott grew up in Michigan and attended Kalamazoo College and received a MBA from the University of Michigan. Professionally, Scott is a local real estate broker with Prudential Starck Realtors.

Julie and Scott have recruited a Facilitating Team of community volunteers to help plan and implement the Summit 303 workshop style meetings.  The team includes community members, , Michelle Bancroft, Mary Hill, John Hoscheit, Rita Payleitner and Pam Turriff.

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Summit 303 will host its first meeting from 7 to 9 p.m. on Wednesday, Feb. 1, in the Kane County Fairgrounds Events Center. Every community member is encouraged to participate. The topic of the first meeting will be 21st Century Learning and the featured speaker will be Dr. Yong Zhao of the University of Oregon. Dr. Zhao will be speaking about the skills students will need in the future in order to be competitive in the global marketplace. Participants will have the opportunity to react to Dr. Zhao’s comments and offer their opinions and suggestions during a small group work session. Summit 303 plans to host one meeting per month through the end of the 2011-12 school year.

Edited from a news release provided by Distirct 303.