NHSCA Board Meeting

The NHHEAF Campus, Concord

Thursday, August 05, 2010

Meeting Minutes

Present: Holly Vieten, Annette Blake, Esther Asbell, Kim Lavoie, Kathryn Sheridan, Robin Hogan, Ashley Shuffleton, Melanie Shokal, Beth Harrington, Mitch Taranow,  Gary Goodnough, Susan Theberge, Charles Langille, Alicia Langille, Celia Slason, Annette Belanger, Lynn Merlone

Welcome and Introductions: Holly Vieten

Board Vision:

• Thoughts of the LDI conference by Holly. Reviewing Board expectations, especially attending meetings. At the May meeting we decided to rotate meetings by days to see if that helps to accommodate people’s schedules.
• Newsletter articles: Please try to meet the 3 out of 4 articles by the deadline. Do what you’re good at and be positive.
• If NHSCA were gone: Robin: Professional networking is a big aspect, development of high quality conferences.

Kim: Advocacy at the state level is strong and we have a visible presence with the state and they (Paul and Marianne) support our endeavors.

Annette: Fall conference is a big plus and people would miss that

Gary: Leadership has been strong for the past years and people know we are a great association.

Lynn: Network of people who have the same ideas keeps her coming back.

Susan: Association has discussions with others about how we have made an impact: national model, advocacy, and it is a great place to learn skills.

Charles: newsletter is supportive and a way to be connected.

Celia: National connection with ASCA is positive.

Strategic Plan Reminder

Reminder that we have been focusing on these: 5 year plan. Please revisit in your committees. Supportive ideas are welcome.

Secretary’s report: Ester recommended approval of the May, 2010 minutes. Robin will email them again to Beth. Minutes were accepted.

NHHEAF update and presentation:

Tori Berube: introductions: Congress passed a health care bill in March. No longer a lending institution but opened up opportunities. Will service loans by the federal gov. Manuals and books, restructuring to adhere to fed standards.  They will service the loans for students. Center for College Planning is a Guarantor. Ensures loans: 1.5 million dollars to continue college access activities. CFCP will receive some of this money for their programming. Hiring people to make presentations in schools. Jobs are posted on Coos, Carrol, and Grafton. Monster and JobsinNH.com.

Programs: STAR, with DCYF, residential group homes on how to access college planning. Annual conference at NHTI. Will present a college track. Tilotson grant through the charitable foundation. $35,000 grant for working with kids in the North Country. Will receive a $1000. Sat. March 26 at Southern New Hampshire University: Destination College. Push for early registrations for juniors and their parents

Discovery Univ. This past year there were 250 kids at Keene in November. 250 Kids to White Mountain Community College. Kids could attend some of these classes.

This year it will be at March 28 at Colby Sawyer College and at White Mtn. Comm.. College. Know the Score: SAT, ACT prep course. Are available for presentations for test techniques, tips etc. Please ask for them.

Fri. Sept. 24; College admission process. Counselor training day. Call Pattie Smith at ext. 143.  Jan. 28, 2011 same thing. Nov. 19 Financial Aid Guidance Counselor 201 class.

They are developing a day for interns for later. Could be put into newsletter as well. Possibly Nov. Dec.

Interest in a middle school counselor training day? Yes, because with the shifting towards early graduation then it would make sense to begin reaching middle schoolers with the college admission process. Wants to meet with middle school counselors to find out needs. The website will be revamped. Schools can schedule a presentation with Bianna Holmes, ext. 191.

Get on the Bus 5^th grade program. In May, Daniel J. Bakie Elementary School in Kingston. Kids sang College Chant song on going to college month in Nov. www.NHcollegeclub.com. Look for College Chant NHHEAF on Youtube.

Treasurer’s Report, Annette Blake: Reminder of mileage reimbursement at 50 cents a mile for committee meetings and board meetings. Please send receipts and Google map for mileage. Email Holly with the amounts and mileage, forward (by snail mail) everything to Annette Blake or take everything to the meeting and have things signed. Maybe make a few copies to put in your binder to have at meetings.

Budget: July statement hasn’t come back. $2600 in membership in June, $1300 in July. We are looking for new membership and hoping more will come in at the Fall conference. Annette found an error the bank had made and it was a $20 difference in our favor! Budget was accepted by the Board.

President’s Report, Holly Vieten:

ASCA Conference, Delegate Assembly, and LDI. Next year’s LDI conference in Seattle.

Review of different regions. Stephanie is our representative for the North Atlantic Region. There is a Regional Meeting on Nov 19 and 20^th overnight. At UTI, an unlimited number of people can attend, speaker on advocacy. College Admissions Board, is a leveled meeting, dinner, next am. Is How to Advocate for your Profession. Let Holly know if you’re interested.

New calendar correction: Nov. 9 should be the 10^th.

Alphagraphics will typeset and take care of the newsletter for us. Email ads to Melanie. Email articles to Beth by the deadline. Need to vote for four, instead of five newsletters in October to make the change for the bylaws.

Sept, Dec. Feb., May publications. Articles are due on the August 15, Nov. 15, Feb. 15, and May 15. Best to get them in early.

Meetings: 4:00 begin time but the days will alternate.

Delegate Assembly: Standards are on their website. 5 new ASCA standards. Look for changes in the upcoming months. There was also realignment of the regions and changing standards for State Leaders or Boards.

Conference: The brochure will be printed next week. Everyone gets a book. Most plans are going well. It is set for Tuesday, Oct 26.

Technology: Annette will be taking on postings on the website so send materials to her to be posted. Discussion over whether or not the technology committee would merge into PR. Technology could also take on other roles.  No policy changes at this time.

Vacancies: Celia will be the Elementary VP (.Thank you, Celia!!) Membership Chair is open, or other committee work is open. *Open call to everyone. Please bring a colleague or a friend to a meeting, any meeting all year.

President-Elect, Lynn Merlone:

Need to work more regionally and to do more for leadership development. What is an ideal sized board? Etc. Vermont has a conference 3^rd week in December. Would we be interested in working with Vermont for a two state conference?

Gary: Thought so but maybe alternating spring and fall so as not to duplicate. Susan: Likes Vermont, many students go to Vermont. Would like to collaborate and use as a way to organize ourselves.

Mitch: Sometimes people can go to one but not two.

What would collaboration look like other than attending conferences?

Mitch: Using technologies

Charles: Overnight collaborative meeting?

Mitch: to clarify needs?

NAR: Could we begin there? Lynn will check on this.

LDI report:

LDI training for our board, maybe next summer. It will take a year to organize.

ASCA Update: ASCA is in the final phase of revamping the standards. The model will remain in place but standards are grouped under five constructs(Motivation, Self-direction, Relationships, Self-Knowledge, Social Consciousness).  These Standards are set to be available early in the fall for review and comment.

Welcome to Melanie Shokal: Goes by Mel. Would like a Membership Chair to help her find people who are not renewing. Doing the Directory will be labor intensive because it’s hard to tell if people are still working there or not. She will send out the additional mailing.

Newsletter: Melanie found that on the bottom of ads listed that mailing lists will be sold. The board was not aware of this process. It isn’t allowed by our bylaws and the little sentence on the bottom of the ads will be taken off. ASCA has this but Kathryn says we are not allowed to opt out of their selling our mailing labels. We will not allow this as a process, but we can review certain instances like with the research committee, who would like to send out research requests to the mailing lists.

Susan wanted to know about the regional lists so that she can get a regional email list for upcoming meetings. Mitch says that there is a way and will address this sometime.

Advocacy, Kim Lavioe: Bylaws. Lynn, Holly, and Charles have offered to help with that. Bylaws are listed on the website. Lynn brought up looking at the bylaw quorum issue. AT LDI she found out that other states may use a smaller quorum to pass changes and that we may need to look at that. Renewal for New Hampshire Children’s Advocacy Network: several different public agencies are part of this and collaborate to ensure that kids’ voices are heard. Susan suggested that they can come here to speak. Kim will look into that. NH Drop-out Initiative: what can NHSCA do to help? She is still waiting to hear.

Level VP Reports:

Elementary, Celia Slason: requested guidance on her new position. Kathryn found the written role description and read aloud. Mitch: possibly adding other ideas like fostering collaboration between grade levels of schools. Communication could be improved between high school and elementary.

Robin: all first time counselors could stand as a way of supporting them

Gary: reduced membership fees for first timers; trying to build up first time counselors.

Holly: maybe meet at the NHHEAF new counselor conferences.

Secondary VP, Charles Langille: Visiting at Almira College. Would like a positive direction to find resources to help out with testing or scheduling: as in the task of building, the process, is there an easier way? Will look into all of the aspects of this issue and write articles on them.

Holly saw a ‘Building a Master Schedule’ workshop offered through UNH.

Susan: how to create change in improving schedules.

Post Secondary, Susan Theberge: There is a weekend class coming up about bullying in Keene and Plymouth State would also have other things listed. Discussion about how to best list upcoming college courses. Susan will submit all of that to the newsletter. Research on Mindfulness is continuing. She wants to know what other ways to help out as a supportive resource. She will list that on the NHSCA scene.

Further discussion ensued.

Ethics, Gary Goodnough: Gary wanted to know if there are specific issues we would like information on regarding ethics. Gary will upload the ASCA ethics article on the webpage.

Kathryn mentioned an issue where someone thought it was ok to therapeutically see students outside of school but their bylaws state that they cannot do that.

Esther: Counselors having facebook pages?

ASCA had an issue about that. Maybe technology and ethics.

Mitch: Maintaining confidentiality especially for new counselors.

Is it ethical to put 16 year olds into college environments when they are not developmentally ready? (Re: the early graduation policies.)

Regarding Governing policy: While looking forward to revisiting committees: is he more an ethics consultant rather than a committee?  There are other committees also where the wording might need to be altered to fit the needs of the newer functioning Board.

Should classroom guidance be graded?

Dinner break

Membership: Ashley Shuffleton has volunteered to be a Membership Chair. Thank you, Ashley!!!

Newsletter, Beth Harrington: Pictures are welcome. Think down the lines for the next few months planning your articles. Annette Belanger suggested that each committee write about their own theme, more like a column. *Email Esther for administrative article ideas. Beth will email newsletter deadline reminders about one to two weeks before the deadline. Articles on ‘sticky’ issues are welcome to help promote the positive ASCA model.

Professional Recognition, Robin Hogan: Robin is open to nominations any time now.

Public Relations, Annette Belanger: Should the school counselor week info. come out sooner because of the change in the newsletter deadlines? Annette will look into this.

Scholarships, Lynn Merlone: $1000. Only one applied last year.

Ashley mentioned that it is hard to find the info. to apply. The deadline is in November. May take applications to the conference to help advertise.

Technology, Mitch Taranow: originally the goal was to increase membership, and to make information available to those who need it. The database now can accept a membership application online. Choices now: online database is repository for our information or update it as Mel uses it? This needs to be settled.

NSCA scene has its own database as well. Who receives pay pal emails to ensure payments are recorded? (Treasurer). The Board agreed to have members join online. ASCA didn’t know we had a scene and Holly will check on this.

Mel can give mailing labels and envelopes. But also, emailing the total directory is the quickest and cheapest way for now. The regional emails will be separated later on. A web manager or company (or the current one) will later on find ways to electronically figure out all of this so that we can send out emails to specific regions, If the current system is working then we need to have a tutorial or we need to move to have a web manager.

Liaisons

Administrative report, Ester Asbell: Esther requests that chairs should get back to preparing reports ahead of time.

Charles: make a report deadline so they are ready before the meeting. *The report needs to be done and emailed to Holly one week before each meeting.

Suggests that the ASCA time and task analysis be used. List your duties, so you can make your data apparent to the admin. Advocate for yourself. If your data is there then you should list the times you went in over time. Who did you miss? Be specific about the things you couldn’t do because you’re being used in other duties. List how your time is being used and what is being neglected. Your advocacy needs to be data driven. Maybe a portfolio for everyone that shows you are servicing every student. Volunteer to give presentations to the school board.

Department of Education Liaison: No report

Student Liaison: Have a possible interest through Keene

Regional Reports:

Greater Monadnock, Alicia Langille: Greater Monadock Conference Sept. 23. Transitions Works, Self Advocacy: 3-5pm.

Sea Coast: No report

Regions: There are 8 regions. Southwestern region merged into greater Monadnock.

Maybe at the conference someone could present information about the vacant positions to advertise.

New Business:

1. Kathryn Sheridan has volunteered to go over all of the archives but they are cumbersome and she would like to know what she could shred. Maybe some of them could be scanned for permanent records.

2. Charles brought up the need for a form for renewal credits and will create a draft.

Adjourned at 2:20. Closed by Holly Vieten