NHSCA Board Meeting

Comfort Inn, Concord

January 23-24, 2009

Meeting Minutes

Present: Annette Belanger, Annette Blake, Jackie Creed, Beth Harrington, Charles Langille, Kim Lavoie, Lynn Merlone, Kim Seaman, Kathryn Sheridan, Susan Theberge, Donna Therrien, Holly Vieten, Shannon Bernier, Robin Hogan, Lisa Labella, Tenielle Nicholson

Meeting was called to order at 4:40 pm

Approval of Agenda: We had to delete administrative liaison from the agenda, as Esther is unable to make the meeting. Add Professional Development to Committee Chair updates. Agenda was approved with changes.

BOARD BUSINESS:

Secretary’s Report, Kim Seaman: Kathryn motioned to accept report; Donna seconded. Minutes were accepted.

Treasurer’s Report, Jackie Creed: As per the November meeting we are to take $2000 from the carryover to technology, for the redesign of our website, which is not reflected on the report submitted. Jackie will take care of this and it will be reflected at the next meeting. Lynn motioned to pass treasurer’s report, Annette Blake seconded, was accepted.

President’s Report, Kim Lavoie:

• Upcoming meetings (calendar)- March 18^th is the next scheduled meeting. It was decided that it should be in Concord. Kim will check with Marianne to see if the DOE is a possibility. If not, Concord HS is a possibility. The start time will be 4:30.

We will change the May 20^th final meeting to Friday, May 15^th at the Common Man, hors d’oeuvres at 4:00, meeting at 4:30 and then dinner at 5:30. It was suggested that we invite Paul Lether and Marianne to our first fall summer meeting to speak. We will still invite them to the May meeting, but just for the dinner. We made this change, as time is very limited in May.

The “EDdies” are on Saturday June 13^th at the Center of NH in Manchester. If you are interested in attending, please let Holly know.

July 14^th and 15^th is the Summer Institute.

• APPI- March 8-11- If you have any issues that you would like brought up to our representatives, let Kim know. Holly asked why the NH frameworks say that they follow the ASCA frameworks, but in regards to ratios, we don’t follow the 1:250 ratio that ASCA suggests. Kathryn suggested that we send information, (our talking points) to Carol Shea-Porter and Paul Hoades ahead of time so that they will have some background information, as you don’t often meet with the actual representative, but one of their assistants.
• Liability Insurance - Kim has contacted 3 companies about Directors and Officers Liability Insurance. Kim brought information (an overview of coverage, and exceptions) for the board to review. There was question as to whether MaryAnn Seney is an employee or a contracted service and whether or not we are liable for her. She is a contracted service. According to other state leaders Kim spoke to, they are paying $1,500-$2,500 per year. Kim will continue to look into this.
• Guidance Directors – The president is still asking to collaborate with NHSCA, the questions is “in what capacity.” Kim suggested that he, the Director’s President, become a member of the technology committee. We are trying to figure out how our relationship can be fostered.  It was decided that a few main people from NHSCA and a few main people from the Guidance Directors should meet to discuss where we go from here.
• Board Direction – We will discuss this tomorrow.
• ACSA Board- Kim is planning on running for High School Vice President for the ASCA executive board. In order to move forward with the process, there needs to be a motion to support Kim’s candidacy. Susan made a motion to support Kim’s candidacy as the High School VP for ASCA. Kathryn seconded. All approved. Motion was passed.

President Elect, Kathryn Sheridan:

Nothing to Report, except that she would like a president-elect for next year.

Elementary VP Report, Donna Therrien:

• Donna asked what she should put in the Elementary VP binder - job description, timeline of things to do, and any other helpful items such as, ideas for future VP’s. Kim L. suggested that it should also include by-laws and policies.
• Donna asked about an “adopt a grandparent” program. There is a program from the Friends program. Donna will look into this. 

Middle School VP Report, Annette Blake:

• Annette got a call from Molly Goslin at the DOE. She is looking to start a panel of people from around the state to address bullying. Her goal is to develop curriculum that could be used in any NH school.  Feb. 5^th is the first meeting to discuss curriculum ideas. Annette asked for any ideas from the board. Stan Davis’ work was suggested. “Stop It” and “Bully Proof”.  Another suggestion was through Rachel’s Challenge and the TIGER program, Healthy Relationships (a program out of Canada) is another resource.
• ACCESS NH meeting in December. They are looking to have panels of college students go into middle schools to discuss college life and planning for college. They are looking to target 8^th graders. The challenges are around coordination, scheduling and time away from the classroom

High School VP Report, Rebecca Schaefer:

• Absent, but Kim L Asked if anyone has read an article in ASCD about a test that 16 year olds could take to “test out” to receive their diploma. At this time, superintendents don’t know about this. We need to find out more about this and continue to work at the state level to advocate what best for students. We may want to talk to the guidance directors about this.

Post Secondary VP Report, Susan Theberge:

• She is working with Tenielle (graduate student) to come up with professional development opportunities that are approved programs. The Keene State programs are all 1 credit. It is now on our website. Susan will write about this in the next newsletter. If anyone has ideas, please send them to Susan
• Tenielle has been doing some research on possible programs for psychological first aid. She found Critical Incident Stress Management to be the most comprehensive model. Tenielle gathered a lot of materials, it was suggested that we link some of these resources on our website. This is a topic that may be a thread at the summer institute.

DOE Updates, Marianne Gfroerer: Not present

Regional Chair Updates:

• Seacoast, Laura Bonner:  Not present
• Western, Lynn Merlone:  Nothing to report.
• Central, Annette Belanger: Looking at the Meredith Community Center as a location, but are currently discussing topics
• North Country, Matt Saladino: not present. It was suggested that maybe we can have one of our overnights in the North Country, such as Franconia.

Committee Chair Updates:

• Nominations and Elections,: The following positions are open on the board for next year: Elementary, Middle and High School level VP’s, Secretary and President-Elect. If you are interested one of these positions, talk to Kim Lavoie. All Committee Chair positions are filled.

• Student Intern Liaison, Leslie Desrosiers: Not present.
• Public Relations, Annette Belanger: Annette got all of the membership forms from MaryAnne Seney. She cataloged how many schools have members, ratios. 80 elementary schools, 44 middle schools, and  64 high schools  are represented as members. She is looking at the suggestions submitted and will distribute them to the Professional Dev. Committee and regional meetings. Annette is looking to revamp the membership form and then make it universal, because right now there are multiple forms out there. She is looking to put an ad in the papers during National School Counselor Week.
• Membership, Kathryn Sheridan: 474 members, almost 100 more than we had last year. We got a lot of renewals and new members at the fall conference. Annette is working with MaryAnne to smooth out a system of renewal forms.
• Research, Susan Theberge: They recently had a retreat and talked with grant writing people to discuss future funding. It looks as though there are two $5000 grants that they are eligible for. They are doing another round of research. They plan on writing more articles on the first pilot. The curriculum is now officially copyrighted and there are 2 national conferences coming up that they are presenting at.
• Ethics, Gary Goodnough: Not present. The board discussed sending Gary a plant and a gift card to a book store as a get-well gift. There was a motion to use monies from the board to pay for this gift. The motion passed.
• Professional Recognition, Holly Vieten: Nominations are in. There was one nomination, where the person was not a certified counselor, but the requirements state the person needs to hold a certification. The board agreed that we need to abide by these guidelines. In the specs it says “holds a masters degree in guidance or counseling” We wondered whether it should be a requirement, as some people have a SW degree, but are certified. Charles and Lynn will join Holly to form an ad hoc committee to discuss this situation.
• Newsletter, Kathryn Sheridan:  The newsletter should arrive next week. We currently have 5 per year. Kathryn is having a difficult time filling in the newsletter. She is considering sending it out quarterly rather than 5 times per year. If we upgrade our website, it might “take the place” of the fifth edition. We will keep the five for this year, but Kathryn will discuss it in the future. Holly asked what the profit loss would be if we dropped one newsletter. Kathryn will look into this. March 1^st is the next deadline. Don’t forget to CC your article to Kim L. so she can incorporate it into her President’s report.
• Advocacy, Kim Lavoie: The committee has not met. ACT is starting an advocacy thread. Kim wondered if anyone would be able to attend their meetings. There are a lot of things going on at the state, but attending these meetings during the day is difficult. Kim is going to outline what has come up this year and disseminate to committee members. Amanda Fitzgerald at ASCA is doing legislative work and her article is called Educating the New Administration. 
• Scholarship, Lynn Merlone: Patrick Roberts, from UNH is the recipient of the Jo Hayslip Scholarship. It was suggested that Lynn send the application to the Internship Supervisor Instructors at each of the institutions to promote more applications in the future.
• Summer Institute, Kathryn Sheridan: Kathryn collated information from the Fall Conference. Based on the fact that many people said that they have only just begun the National Model, addressing the Nat’l Model should be a thread. Some ideas: Class Management for counselors, rather than lesson plans, Data-How do we use the NECAP’s, Technology- using EZ analyze, Lesson planning the comprehensive way, Bibliotherapy.

The group liked the idea of having different threads. Another idea is outcome research, especially given the fact that some positions are being cut.

Kim L. is going to contact the people who expressed interest in becoming involved on the board and/or committees.

June 2^nd will be the early bird special. Registration information will go out after spring break.

• Professional Development, Beth Harrington:  The committee is working to meet on-line. They are interested in conducting a survey to see in what areas counselors feel they need support. They want to create a directory of programs and services offered in state and then divided by region. They are hoping to not overlap with conferences, past and present. They are also looking to use counselors as resource; lesson plan trade-off.

They are also looking at ways to provide recertification opportunities, whether it’s ways to save money or to help create portfolios, which is the direction some schools are going.

Ways to involve others: Tabled until tomorrow

Meeting was adjourned at 8:05 pm

Saturday January 24^th

Present: Annette Belanger, Jackie Creed, Beth Harrington, Charles Langille, Kim Lavoie, Lynn Merlone, Kim Seaman, Kathryn Sheridan, Mitch Taranow, Susan Theberge, Lisa Labella, Tenielle Nicholson

Meeting called to order at 8:45 am

Committee Updates

• Technology, Mitch Taranow- Mitch is bringing a potential web designer to the committee meeting at 11:00 today. They will address: new website look, on-line membership possibilities, listservs, links for resources, paypal integration, and maintaining website, Mitch has been quoted $3000 to do this service and then $40/hr for maintenance. Other suggestions: having the site searchable, having registrations on-line will make the audit process much cleaner as well.

We discussed the possibility of having web-based meetings, such at WebCT or Blackboard, to help promote communication, not only for the Technology committee, but of other committees as well.

Kim asked that we get in writing an estimate of how many hours he expects to clock for maintenance, since we will be paying him hourly.

State of NH regional mapping: How can we make our regions more user friendly?

Current Regions:

-North-Coos, Grafton and Carroll county

-South-parts of Rockingham and Hillsboro

-Northwest-Sullivan

-Central-Belknap and Merrimack

-Southwest-Cheshire

-Seacoast- Strafford and parts of Rockingham

We have 6 regions according to our governing policies, but we have only 4 regional chairs.

With the new website we will not be paying for email blasts, so we can send regional meeting notices to everyone.

Possible new regions:

-Great North Woods - Matt

-White Mountains - Matt

-Lakes Region -Annette

-Merrimack Valley

-Capitol Region

-Seacoast - Laura

-Greater Monadnock Region - Lynn

-Dartmouth Sunapee

Kim asked if someone is interested in looking at these new names, breaking out which towns would be included in each of these. Charles is going to look at the state map and bring this back to the next meeting. We will then decide if we make official changes to the region names and towns included.

It was suggested that we invite people who are potentially interested to run regional meetings to our May meeting. Annette Belanger is going to write a job description for the regional meeting chairs. Once the website it up, we can have a link to the regions and if we don’t have coordinators, we can invite someone to join via the website.

Shannon is interested in taking a region, the Capitol Region.

We have one meeting left this year. What can we complete by the end of the year, and what to we need to think about for next year?

Highlights of progress and completed tasks:

• Professional development plan in progress
• We have a public relations chair and are making progress there
• We will have a new website
• Research is progressing well.
• We have made great gains in reaching out for new board members

Thinking towards next year:

• We need to get our mission out, as many people don’t really know what NHSCA’s mission is.
• With our new administration in DC, we may want to focus on  advocacy since there will be many new initiatives.

We have the capability for ASCA to collect membership money for us. When you pay or renew membership with ASCA, you can also join NHSCA. We are June to June membership, but ASCA is 1 year from date of registration. Kim will look into this as a possibility.

Strategic Plan Review: areas to focus on next year

Goal #1

• Next year focus on VP levels and how they can connect with their levels.
• Ed Trust modules– we need to determine if this is a direction we still want to pursue.

Goal #3

• Continue building relationships with legislators, etc.
• Continue to develop presence at state level
• We are continuing research
• Develop media presentation to promote school counselors. Annette is going to work on this. She will create a template so that others can add the particulars from their school.
• Kim needs to reconnect with Elin about NH-CAN

• Develop a NHSCA legislative platform. This will be a priority for next year. How political do we want to be? We want to inform our membership regarding what’s going on, but not necessarily choose a political side. We need to be careful around this topic. We need to advocate for the profession and we want to make sure that we are getting input from our membership.

Goal #4

· For posting resources, it would be a great connection to have a library science person to look at the resource. How does ASCA or APA do this? Beth will look into this.

· Lynn mentioned that the research committee was supposed to promote research, but she is worried that they are focusing on one project and not the greater goals. Kathryn said that research is happening, but that it is not really being talked about (she has done bibliotherapy)

· Susan said that having an outcome research thread at the summer institute would further promote research. Now that they have the model of how to do research, it would be great to use the summer institute to expand it.

· Maybe the research committee should come up with a future plan for the end of the year – next steps.

Goal # 5 Ethical standards

• Newsletter is going well.

Goal #6 Strategic partnerships

• We are still working on this. Continue to work toward partnership with Rivier and UNH. Should we invite professor from these institutions to the May dinner?

Future planning: Next year we will need to begin to look at a new strategic plan. We will need to begin this discussion soon.

To Do:

Position Binders for all Executive Board members due by the May Meeting 

Finance committee will meet in April.

We need to review meeting minutes over the past 2 years to find changes to the by-laws that have been voted on. Kim Seaman and Kathryn Sheridan will do this. They will present changes at the next meeting for board approval before we officially update the governing policies.

Should we be looking at revamping the NH model to be more aligned with the ASCA National Model? Lynn will contact Marianne Gfroerer to see if there are monies to re write it, as it is not completely aligned with the ASCA model.

Meeting was adjourned at 10:50 am

Respectfully submitted,

Kim Seaman

NHSCA Secretary