Looking Forward to our First Membership Meeting as a German School Abroad

Based on our new Board bylaws, which were established to be aligned with the other 136 worldwide German Schools Abroad (DAS Schulen), all GISC parents are considered official members of the GISC community.

The German government typically supports DAS Schulen financially from 1st grade through 12th grade, but the financial support will only be given once GISC graduates students from 12th grade. The support will be tied to student enrollment numbers in grades 1-12. For this next year and the following years, Germany will support our school by sending and compensating an experienced and highly qualified educator to serve as the school’s Director.

That will be the extent of financial support for the coming years. In addition to this financial support, GISC will also be the beneficiary of networking and participating in professional development with other DAS Schulen, and we will also benefit from hiring experienced teachers from Germany without those newly hired teachers losing any of their status or benefits as civil servants.

Based on this eventual funding formula, DAS Schulen often have two types of memberships – we, too, have created two classifications – a full membership for all families with children in grades 1-8 (and eventually up to 12th grade) and an initial membership for Pre-K and Vorschule families.

There will be two annual membership meetings, and all members (both full and initial membership families) will be invited to the meetings. Families with full membership will be asked to vote on/approve a variety of topics, including  two essential school governance functions: 1) Full membership families have one vote (regardless of how many children enrolled) to approve a school budget as presented by the Board of Trustees; and 2) will also have voting privileges on approving new members for the Board of Trustees.

There are other membership privileges and procedures, all of which will be compiled in a special membership handbook that will be published prior to the end of this school year. For the remainder of this school year, GISC will work toward implementing the new membership system.

At our upcoming meeting on January 28, we will ask families with full membership to approve the 2025/26 school budget – we will mail to you next Tuesday in advance an executive summary presentation on the new school budget. Please look that presentation over so that you may make an informed decision on voting on the 25/26 budget. 

Our January 28 meeting will be held in-person only, here at GISC with childcare provided. We will of course update the community with a summary of the meeting. Membership meetings will not be held in hybrid format, meaning these meetings can either be held in-person or virtually. For this first meeting, we think it is appropriate to hold this presentation in an in-person format. As we get used to these meetings, the school may very well decide to conduct a virtual meeting.

 

We look forward to seeing you on Tuesday, January 28.