PEEP MEETING HIGHLIGHTS
Sunday, April 17, 2005

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Ned Fenton greeted all the parents and EEPsters in attendance.

PEEP Helene Chemel collected donations from 9-10 before the meeting for sale on ebay through her company ISoldIt in Chatsworth. The number of donations were small, as was PEEP attendance at the meeting. Helene will make this an on-going offer - accepting items which she will list and sell on ebay, donating all the revenues to EEP - and we expect to see many more items donated next fall at the December meeting. In the meantime, if you have items, please feel free to call Helene directly at 818-701-0789 or email her at helene.chemel@i-soldit.com. She will be happy to discuss what items are good (collectibles, electronics - not old clothes) and tell you how to drop things off at her Chatsworth store. Or save them until next December's meeting! Visit the website at http://www.i-soldit.com/.

Next PEEP Donna Hay informed everyone that the expanded website is now available at http://www.earlyentrancefoundation.org and it contains a plethora of useful links, including ones to all of Rich's newsletters, Rich's articles of interest and many interesting websites. As soon as the Alumni data base is ready, this website will link to it too. She mentioned that we are still signing families up for electronic scrip - grocery club cards only (no credit card or debit card information). While this year we are only making hundreds of dollars from this, if we get better participation by our PEEPs, it could be thousands in the future. Friends and other family members can sign up too! If no charity is specified on your grocery club card, then the grocery store just keeps all the money. It costs participants nothing, and can raise lots of money for EEP. Visit the website and click on "electronic scrip" for more information.

Richard then spoke about the new happenings, starting with his Ph.D. program which starts in August at USC. He spoke about why he chose USC and what impact it will have on the EEP program now and in the future. He is looking for parent volunteers to staff the EEP rooms one afternoon a week - email him at rmaddox@csula.edu if you can help out.

Rich also shared his favorite recent articles. All are online for all parents to read at their leisure on the Early Entrance Foundation website: http://www.earlyentrancefoundation.org/articles/articleindex.html. The new articles included a TIME Magazine article on "Parents Behaving Badly" and LA Times articles on living wills, college buffing up aging brains, and teens sharing parents' religion. He also shared an email he had received about advice on how to avoid identity theft (his favorites were: put just your first initial on your checks instead of your first name, so thieves would not know how you sign your checks - and do not sign your credit cards but put "Photo ID Required" instead). The article index link has a brief description of almost 50 articles, with links to each complete article, including the articles above.

EEP Club members then got up to discuss items of interest.

• Lemon-head t-shirts were available at $10 each, EEPC sweatshirts at $20, car license frames at $5 and a form for yearbook orders (now $35 each, and well worth it)!
• Treasurer Andrew P. shared the balance sheet with income and expenses for the quarter ending 3/18 (net income was $488 and the total club balance is $2603).
• The social chairs reminded all the parents of the upcoming events. Coming up shortly is the Talent show on Friday, May 13th (probably in Monrovia, probably 7-9 pm) - so far only 7 talented EEPsters have signed up, and the call is out to PEEPs and EEPsters alike to sign up for a spot on the talent floor, and everyone should be sure to put the date on the calendar for a fun evening of comraderie and laughs - parent volunteers are requested to help with set up and donate refreshment items. More information will be sent home shortly. Other upcoming events are the San Clemente trip on June 13-15 (the social chairs would also like help with transportation), the return to Catalina Island on Sep 8-11, and the Medieval Times rescheduled to sometime this fall (and the social chairs were delighted to hear about the 2-for-1 coupons in the Entertainment booklets - please let them know if any PEEP has one of these or know how to get them!).
• And the Tech chairs thanked everyone for the new computers.

PEEP Shelley Kadison thanked all the donors to the 2004-2005 Annual Giving for support of EEP Campaign. 41 families have donated so far, meeting half of our goal (we raised $12,880 so far). This money was used to improve the environment for all the EEPsters every day in the EEP rooms:

• computer lab - we completely refitted the computer room in March with new computers, flat screens, tables and chairs and a digital camera
• furniture - we are in the process of ordering new kitchen tables and chairs
• lockers - we are in the process of ordering lockers as well
• recreation - we have plenty of new games including a new foosball table, and will also get a dvd player
• cleaning - we have professionally cleaned the suite of rooms (a quarterly goal)

Rich reported that 325 kids registered for the testing last Fall and 345 more for the Spring testing today. Since 10-20% qualify for EEP, he expects to have about 75-95 qualify as summer provies. He has already interviewed 34 prospective students, and expects at least another 50 interviews. Plans are to accept 25 new EEPsters for the fall quarter. Mentor bios for the summer will be online shortly, and can be reached from the new EEP club website (more user-friendly name): http://www.eepclub.org/.

Finally, Rich reminded everyone that Priority Registration is on Monday, April 25th (tuition payments April 20-22nd and EEP Advisement slips due this Thurday, April 21st). Emails will be sent this summer with the dates for the Fall Quarter.

Thank you to all the PEEPs who attended Sunday's meeting. Best wishes to all for a fun and safe summer.