ED MARTIN, the retired Clergy of our club, acted as Master of Ceremonies and introduced all guests after PRESIDENT BARB GRECO opened our meeting. Guests attending were clergy and fellow Kiwanians from the Apple Valley Club, Kamiakin Club, Selah and West Valley Clubs. Our own special members brought their clergy guests and MIKE WILSON, hosted his daughter Megan who is at UW Law School. Ed Martin brought his lovely wife. Our musical guests who later entertained us with song, sand America the Beautiful. They were"For Eternity" Cindy, Pam and Leslie from the West Valley Nazarene Church. DOUG COCHRAN led us in prayer. AMY NEAL greeted us.

NEW MEMBER INDUCTION: BRIAN BLOUNT SPONSORED CAROL CAVENAUGH, our newest member and President Barb brought her officially into the Club. Welcome, Carol! Carol has been with the YMCA for 8 years and will be a great addition to our Club.

Brian then announced the Gap to Gap celebration with the race in the a.m., then the Family Festival in the afternoon and the Rock the Gap Party in the evening. Volunteers are needed so contact LINDA HACKETT or VENETTA MILLER if you can help Friday night May 30th, with set up, Saturday, May 31st, with all kinds of activities and Sunday, June 1st, with clean up. This all takes place at the Greenway and is a joint effort fund raiser for the Greenway and for our efforts for MLK playground equipment.

JOHN WARREN then reminded us of Camp Roganunda workday on Saturday June 7. Sign up with John. Breakfast and Lunch will be provided and many fun projects will be available.

BECKY SCHOLL then introduced the Superintendent of the Yakima Schools, Dr. Ben Soria as our Clergy Day guest speaker. Dr. Soria gave us much insight into the challenges that face our schools today and also reminded us that there are great things going on also. Yakima's goals are to increase student achievement, increase community and parent involvement and increase student attendance. There are many successes at the elementary level towards these goals but some frustration at the Jr. High and high school levels. One of the main problems is finding that students cannot ready once they reach the high school level. Children need to read by the 3rd grade if they are to be successful in their school careers. A new reading series has started this past year and the goal will be to have 85 to 90% of kids reading in kindergarten. Literacy is a school wide effort.

One of the major problems is the number of children that come to the Yakima schools that are not English speaking. They are tested in English which results in testing of whether they have mastered speaking English not what skills are mastered. (In Texas the WASL is done in Spanish and in English). There are also financial challenges. The district has a $3million reduction with $1 million in central services. 26-30 positions will be reduced hopefully by attrition. Reductions destroy teams and the momentum that has been developed. He challenged the community to work together to encourage parent involvement and to develop programs that will teach parenting skills. The schools can not do it alone.

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