October 15, 2007, Lisle, IL

To Math Kangaroo Leaders in USA.

Letter 2008.2

It’s official! Registration for Math Kangaroo 2008 is open!

Please invite all students, grades 2-12, to participate!

The competition date is: March 27, 2008.

Here’s the link for registration: on line or by mail

Or if your school takes care of the registration, please use Excel attached to this e-mail and send it to info@mathkangaroo.org, in December.

(Let me know if you have any registration problems or questions.)

Registration Deadline: December 15, 2007.

Registration Fee: $20/student due January 15, 2008. If financial aid is needed, please advise families to send e-mail to Izabela@mathkangaroo.org; credentials will be requested.

Here is our plan for March 27, 2008, Math Kangaroo event.

Fliers and Posters.

This month we will ship you our fliers and posters. They are also posted on our web page - if anybody wishes to print them: 2008 Poster , 2008 Flyer or 2008 Black Flyer

This year - to lower costs - our poster is smaller and we will mail you less fliers. I would like to encourage you to copy posters and fliers you receive from us. Put your location name on the flier before making copies. If you mail us your receipt with a note what it is for (for example: 200 copies of a flier for Einstein School) and put your signature next to the note - we will reimburse you up to $20. If you plan to produce thousands of fliers to distribute them across your school districts – we are aware of few such instances – please contact us individually and we will consider adjusting our budget.

We believe we can save money on US PS this way.

Communication with Families.

October: Please send e-mail to all previous participants and to other families you are in touch with. As a rule, please put private addresses in bc (blind copy), because of privacy rights some parents are concerned about. Address your e-mail to someone who agreed to that and hide the rest of names. Of course, you are welcome to send your e-mail to info@mathkangaroo.org

Sign your e-mail with your name and put Math Kangaroo in USA, NFP under your signature, like in the example:

Jane Doyle

Math Kangaroo in USA, NFP - Sugar City, IL

John Doyle

Math Kangaroo in USA, NFP - Edison School, Flower Town, AL

If possible - send press release to your local newspaper (see one on our web page: October 1st, 2007 Press Release; add specific information about your location.

December 1^st: e-mail a polite reminder about registration ending on December 15.

December 15^th: e-mail us Excel with the names of the students your school registered.

January 15^th: make sure your payment is received by our office.

February 28^th: send e-mail to all registered participants with confirmation about March 27, 2008 Math Kangaroo competition, with your place address and time of the test.

Beginning of May: send e-mail to those who are the top winners and are invited to the Awards Gala – the date will be set and communicated to you by the beginning of May. Please consider preparing Awards Gala at your locations on the same date or shortly after.

After Awards Gala: inform students how they can claim their prizes if they did not attend the Awards Gala. You will need to communicate about the place and time frame when the families can pick up prizes from you.

Communication with Math Kangaroo in USA Headquarters.

January 15 - 20: you will be sent lists of all the students registered for your location: via Internet and/or with Excel. All corrections need to be made by January 31^st.

First week of March: you will receive t-shirts, pencils, gifts, certificates of participation and the questions.

March 28 you will mail us just answer forms - please sort them by level, if possible.

Beginning of May: we will inform you about the top winners and about the date of Awards Gala in Chicago.

It is possible that the awards announcement will be moved to June if we have many participants and scoring answer forms takes much time. We plan to score the cards by three independent teams to make sure there is no discrepancy. We have just one machine to do this.

General Concerns:

- Please do not plan for more than 60 students in one hall. If you have more participants, if possible, please use more rooms.

- You need people to help you to take care of the students while they take the test. Please plan for a person for every 15 students, in addition to you - the leader. Some parents will be happy to help.

If you have 12 participants - 1 person will be helping you.

If you have 20 students - 2 people will be with you.

In advance, inform parents that they need to pickup their children when they finish the test, because there are no resources to take care of the students outside the competition classroom. Some students will be ready to leave in 30 minutes. The time for the test is 75 minutes.

- If testing concludes before 6 o'clock local time, do not allow students to take their tests home on that day.

- The results of the top winners will be on our web page. All others can learn about their score only if parents contact us, Izabela, Joanna or myself.

- We will send the recognition letters to the schools, if we have the schools addresses.

I have noticed that some parents entered the school address carelessly this week on our registration page. When informing schools, we do not reveal "wrong" results but rather say "the student was awarded for participation and achievement". About the top winners, we are much more specific.

Please send me questions and suggestions, if there are any.

Let’s all plan for a successful, joyful and trouble free event on Match 27.

Thank you all for sharing your enthusiasm with me.

Sincerely,

Maria Omelanczuk, CEO

Math Kangaroo in USA, NFP