Archive: Around Town

At its September 20, 2010 annual meeting, the Ithaca Public Education Initiative (IPEI) welcomed two new members to its board of directors: Kat Anderson and Deborah O’Connor. The board also reelected five current members to additional three-year terms: Ann Caren, Mary Grainger, Fran Kozen, Susan Piliero, and George Taber. And the board bid farewell with deep thanks for their service to retiring members Robert Comacho, Gabrielle Weber, and Matt Mackerer.

New member Katherine (Kat) Anderson is a fundraising professional and consultant who has worked for a wide variety of local and regional not-for-profit agencies, including Planned Parenthood, Family & Children’s Service, the Wilson Children’s Center, Schuyler County Historical Society, and Lifelong. She became familiar with IPEI while serving for the past few years on IPEI’s grants committee. She is a previous member of the board of The Ink Shop Printmaking Center and currently serves on the board of Educate the Children, an international development agency working to empower women and children in rural Nepal. Kat has a child who is currently a freshman at Lehman Alternative Community School.

New member Deborah O’Connor has been active in the Ithaca City School District since 1988, when the eldest of her three children started kindergarten. She has served as treasurer, secretary, vice president, and/or president of the PTAs of Caroline Elementary School, DeWitt Middle School, and Ithaca High School, as well as of the PTA Council. More recently, she served for two terms on the Ithaca Board of Education, including a four-year stint as vice president. Deborah first joined the IPEI board in 2002 and served as its treasurer in 2003 before resigning after her election to the Board of Education. Her youngest child graduated from IHS in 2007.

In other business at its annual meeting, board president Terry Byrnes announced a final tally of $155,657 in grants to Ithaca schools during the 2009–10 school year, impacting virtually every grade in every school in the district. In announcing the total, Byrnes thanked the Ithaca community for another year of amazing support and noted that, “As teachers do more with less, IPEI is proud to be a vehicle through which the community can show support for their efforts and can invest in our students’ future.”

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