A Message from NAPT Executive Director Mike Martin

• By: admin
• On: 01/15/2021 09:40:34
• In: Association Updates

I am writing to you today for several reasons.

First, to say THANK YOU. Thank you for being a member of NAPT and especially for doing so during the pandemic. The last 10 months have been really difficult, full of pitfalls and other challenges, and your faith in us and your support of us has really kept us moving forward, particularly when there were times, we weren't sure we could.
 
Thank you also for being open-minded and forward-thinking. We realized early on that to survive the pandemic we must transform, become something different, something more and, most importantly, something better. That is why we set out to create new products and services, each designed to help you communicate, collaborate, and connect easier and more often. Your feedback and your ideas are helping us tremendously, so please keep them coming. 
 
Thank you for being patient. We realize it may feel as if we are building this plane in the air. But, one of the foundational ideas behind NAPT ACTS!, for example, is that we want to be more nimble than ever, to be more responsive to your needs, and able to give you what you want quickly, with shorter lead times. That has an enormous upside, but it also has a downside. The webinar we scheduled for January 19th is a case in point.
 
Just a couple of days after Congress passed and the President signed the latest Covid relief package on December 27th, we scheduled a webinar for January 19th to explain it to you. Now, a mere 2 weeks later, that seems like ancient history, eclipsed by the events that took place in our nation's Capital on January 6th and in the time since. In fact, things have changed so rapidly that our Washington, D.C.-based speakers have suggested we should postpone the webinar until January 27th instead, when we will be able to discuss, in greater detail, the landscape of our Nation's Capitol. That seems logical to me and I hope it does to you too.
 
We will therefore have three webinars the week of January 25th. On January 26th, Nathan Edwards from MITRE and Terry Guy Seaman from the Colorado Springs SD 11 will discuss the results of a demonstration project intended to reduce the spread of COVID-19 on the school bus. On January 27th, our friends from AASA and ASBO International will discuss recent developments in K-12 education at the federal level and their impact on state and local operations. On January 28th, Tim Ammon and I will launch our new show, called “Push 2 Talk,” where we will discuss, debate, and analyze a variety of school transportation, K-12, and other education-related issues.
 
In closing, I encourage you to participate actively in the NAPT Community on the RethinkEDU platform. I look forward to seeing you online soon. And, in the interim, I encourage all of you to be well, take care, stay safe and be smart.