Message from the President

Hello to all and welcome to the 2017-2018 school year!  By now I am sure everything has ramped up and we are all well on our way to another great year of serving our students, families and staffs of our respective school districts!  This is our second edition of our yearly Elk Grove Regional Association of School Psychologists newsletter.  Since it is our second edition, I will not be as long winded as I was in last year’s president’s messageJ  To start with I want to briefly review what we accomplished last year as an organization.  First, it is wonderful to report that by the end of last school year EGRASP had grown to well over 90 members!  We have easily become the largest CASP affiliate in Northern California!  Most of this growth in membership  is due to the great workshops that EGRASP hosted  including Dr. Steven Feifer on the Feifer Assessment of Math, Dr. Melissa Holland on Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, and Dr. Sam Goldstein on Autism Spectrum Disorder.  Last school year we also put together two fantastic EGRASP mixers which were both a great success!  During School Psychology Awareness Week, we again had our Fall Mixer at Zocalo in midtown Sacramento, who have been very gracious and supportive in hosting our events.  The turn-out far exceeded our inaugural EGRASP mixer the previous year.  The mood was very festive and joyful, and with donations from PAR and Zocalo our event raffle was able to raise nearly $400 for the CASP Cultural and Linguistic Diversity Scholarship Fund!  We finished the year by hosting an End of the Year Mixer at On The Border in Elk Grove which also had a great turn out where members got to mingle, console and support each other on another very busy school year.  Myself and the EGRASP Board are very excited about what we have planned for this school year.  We have a great line up in very informative and relevant workshops planned.  We start this year with a bang with two great workshops.  The first by Dr. Feifer, who has become a group favorite, on the Feifer Assessment of Reading and Neuropsychology of Emotional Disorders, and also Dr. Milton Dehn on Patterns of Strength and Weaknesses.  Later this Fall we have Dr. Randy Kamphaus on BASC-3 Interventions and Carl Corbin on Law and Ethics.  Next, our Fall Mixer for SPAW week promises to be the best yet with four different test companies pledging test kit donations for our annual raffle!  Finally this year we are hoping to add an EGRASP website to our social media connections.  We hope that it will allow us to gain memberships, sign up for workshops , and spread the word about our organization and what we do in a more efficient way.  So as you can see EGRASP at the start of just our third full year of existence has a lot to be proud of!  Here’s to a great year ahead and I hope to see and meet all of you at our workshops and at the CASP convention!

Armando Fernandez
MS, LEP
EGRASP PRESIDENT