NHSCA Board Meeting
January 18, 2012 4:00 – 7:00
NHTI Grappone Hall Room 217
Meeting Minutes
Members in attendance: Robin Hogan, Lynn Merlone, Kathy Hoppa, Mitch Taranow, Celia Salson, Beth Harrington, Stephanie Collins, Melinda Avellino, Robin Gregg, Brent Clanin, Bill Hughen, Amy Muscott, Holly Vieten, Annette Blake, Charles Langille and Lou Yelgin
Call to order: 4:07 pm
Welcome
Statement requesting RSVP a week prior next meeting in order to make sure that we will have a quorum and can make accurate dinner reservations
Approval of agenda
Secretary’s Report
Approval of November Board meeting minutes
minor spelling changes emailed by Lynn to be made-under scholarship chair: change now to today Bill Hughen and Charles Langille names were misspelled
Motion: Mitch Second: Karen approved
Treasurer’s Report
● To date $2000 for mileage: we may want to reconsider for next year’s budget increasing the yearly amount. Question: Do we Need to move money now? Determined that we will wait until next month and see where we are.
● Executive services: Payment as of now is a couple $100 under the contracted amount
● payment is $4800 whole year so far 192 hours board business 32.5 hours for fall conference $5600 total $800 of which is from the fall conference $4100 is documented currently for executive services in treasurer’s report. Annette will touch bases with Mel to discuss. Every time Mel was paid it was from the executive services account not fall conference account. Next year we should edit executive service agreement to add more hours. A lot of hours are required for updating the directory.
● $27000 end of December.
● Receipts from fall conference are divided by months
Motion: Robin Second: Beth approved
President’s Report
Report:
● Lynn, Kim, Charles and Stephanie will work on updating the Board Policies using Googledocs and will have them ready for the March meeting.
● Please inform me of any volunteers who have assisted with your committees this year.
Discussion during board meeting:
● May meeting rescheduled for Friday May 11, at the Common Man in Concord: 4pm-5:30pm will be the meeting, dinner at 6pm
● Discussion took place to determine if it serves NH school counselors for NHSCA to become involved with a Century 21 committee lead by Century 21 President Paul Leather that is examining college and career readiness , as well as graduation plans. It was determined that a conversation with DOE could be investigative to gather more information
President-Elect Report
Report: President Elect Report will focus on the upcoming conference meeting after the regularly scheduled NHSCA Board meeting.
Any members who would like to help develop the NHSCA 2012 conference are encouraged to attend.
I have the feedback from the evaluations of the 2011 Conference to discuss.
Past President’s Report Discussion (5 minutes)
Report: Just a quick reminder that we are looking to secure at least eight board members to volunteer at NHHEAF's Destination College. The board agreed several months ago that the NHSCA Board would like to thank NHHEAF for their support by volunteering at NHHEAF's premier event. It takes an army of volunteers and NHHEAF employees to work this event. The event is being held on Saturday, March 24th at Southern NH University in Manchester. The event attracts over 1200 juniors and parents for a free day of college workshops, inspirational speakers, lunch and a college fair. The NHSCA Board is needed only for registration in the morning (7-9am - it's early). To put it in perspective, registration is held in a gymnasium with over 12 tables dedicated to the alphabetical registration process. You are welcome to stay after registration and sit it on workshops or speakers (see website below for a list of workshops). Or, if you have a junior in high school of your own, register them online at www.destinationcollege.org and bring them along! (Note the website and registration will be open soon) Volunteers for Destination College March 24, 2012 at SNHU Manchester
Volunteers for Destination College: Robin G, Robin H., Brent, Amy, Beth, Adrienne and Stephanie.
Administrative Assistant
Report: Membership – We have 388 members, 5 are retired and 35 are students. Reminder postcards are completed and mailed to lapsed members. Postcards will also be sent to SAUs without NHSCA members.
Newsletter – We have 7 ads for the upcoming issue. Reminder emails were sent to previous advertisers. One full page ad was received along with a few inquiries for the next issue.
Directory – The cover, ads and information have been sent to the printer and the finished directory will be mailed out shortly. Much time was spent this year on verifying and updating all the data in the directory, hopefully this will produce a more accurate document.
Other – Since July 1, 2011, 193 hours have been spent on regular NHSCA related work and 32.75 hours were spent on the fall conference.
VP REPORTS
Elementary
Report: I will prepare an info packet for the board meeting; to include current research and communication with CSCORE out of UMass. (Center for School Counseling Outcome Research and Evaluation). I have been communicating with Karen Harrington at CSCORE about the possibility of having a Data Training here in NH in the spring.
Amy Muscott has been looking at availability of SERESC. I will prepare a potential budget and agenda ideas for the board members.
Middle School
Report: I have contacted, through a mass email, middle school counselors in the state asking for information, challenges, ideas, etc. that they would be looking for. I have heard back from only a couple but did get some great ideas on future articles.
High School
Report: All 1 credit papers that have been submitted have been graded. 2 students have added the course late and are still working on them, 2 students are working on rewrites. All others have been graded and returned. 15 people took advantage of the 1 credit option for the fall conference this year.
I will be looking at the Independent Development Accounts over the next couple of months and perhaps completing an article for the next newsletter on them. IDA's came about from an email sent to Lynn and I have agreed to look into them since I have little knowledge of them before getting information out to counseling colleagues.
Post Secondary
Report: When I first joined the Board a number of years ago, we began meeting for overnights on Fri/Sat. We had two overnights a year plus a day long meeting in the summer which cut back on the after-school meetings. It was wonderful to have the time to really get into the work without rushing. It also allowed those of us who teach at the college level to attend since weekday meetings are usually not possible. Lynn has been looking at the relative costs and thought this could be an item on the agenda.
Other news: The online journal Mindfulness.org is excited about the article produced by the research group on school counselors teaching mindfulness to children and is editing it for publication. We should have a finalized curriculum available this spring and are considering options for sharing it with folks who have experience with mindfulness/meditation.
Stay tuned for the spring regional meeting in the Greater Monadnock Area.
Discussion during meeting:
Ways to make board meetings more accessible to board members. Idea generated wa to use Skype and to continue to rotate meeting nights for flexibility. Mitch will work with Robin to connect with NHTI on how to make it possible to use Skype for the next meeting.
REGIONAL CHAIRS
Seacoast
Greater North Woods
Monadnock
Report: As the new Monadnock regional representative, I am beginning to talk with Monadnock area school counselors about our regional meeting, to take place this coming Spring (2012) at Keene State College. One idea discussed by a small group of Monadnock area counselors is to include regional mental health providers at our gathering, as a follow-up to a meeting that took place last December (2010) at Peterborough Elementary School. At that meeting, ConVal School District counselors, social workers, and school psychologists hosted a breakfast for mental health services providers from the Greater Peterborough area. School counselors from neighboring districts also were invited, and counselors from the Jaffrey-Rindge district attended. We would like to expand the circle to include counselors and mental health providers from the rest of the Monadnock region, particularly the Greater Keene area. Another idea for the regional meeting is to invite the new director of the Monadnock area’s prevention collaborative, Mary Drew, to address the counselors from our region. These two ideas are not mutually exclusive! More details on the meeting will be forthcoming.
Monadnock area school counselors who have been involved in the mindfulness research and curriculum project over the past 6-8 years are planning to meet later this month at Keene State to finish revising the small group mindfulness curriculum the group developed and piloted and to discuss the group’s future plans.
Lakes Region
Report: Planning is underway for the spring meeting in the Lakes Region. What I am trying to do is have several private mental health professionals from the area come to the meeting to participate in a panel discussion. The purpose will be for school counselors to meet some of the local mental health counselors and find out more about the services they provide. I am looking to have the meeting in early April. I have gathered several names of counselors and have begun to make phone calls. So far we have one counselor who has volunteered to attend the meeting.
White Mountains
Report: Adreinne Backer and I hope to gather forces and put something together for our region in the spring. Please keep me updated. Hope everyone is doing well and having a great new year!
Capital - vacant
Dartmouth/Sunapee - vacant
Merrimack - vacant
COMMITTEE CHAIRS
Nominations and Elections
● Information about elections will go out in the last newsletter. Board members should contact Lynn by next board meeting regarding their intent to remain in their positions or not
● Possibility of 2 people to attend LDI this summer with the president elect
Technology
Report: NHSCA currently pays 2 services to drive our website. Wildapricot.com manages our membership and drives most of our site pages. Groupsites.com drives the NHSCA SCENE. We could save over $600 per year if we can provide essential SCENE functions without using groupsites. This would also eliminate the need for members to login to 2 separate areas. We believe we can do this using new wildapricot features along with other resources we already have.
We are asking board members to tell us what features they want to keep from the NHSCA SCENE, as well as what they would like to see added or changed on our site. We will discuss this briefly at January’s meeting and then begin setting up test discussions, groups, blogs, etc.
The goal is to have no further need for groupsites.com when our subscription comes due in April.
During the meeting:
● NHSCA pays for both service Groupsite and Wild Apricot. Looking to cancel Groupsite
● Looking for feedback on what we like about Groupsite that we would want to keep.
● Technology committee meeting after board meeting.
● Elementary level would like a resource page for all to share with categories for easy access: members only benefit wild apricot shows more links to the website than for nonmembers
● Please email what you like and want to Mitch so that the website can be created to meet the needs of the members.
● Subcommittee times coming up in order to complete this for April
● Send any resources you want on the website to Mitch and Lynn for review and then posting. Such as any important dates like school counselor week February 6-10 and the next board meeting march 23
Public Relations
Report: More than thirty Holiday cards from NHSCA were mailed in December. The list included folks from the state DOE, various agencies and groups that have a relationship with counselors in NH (NHHEAF, NHPTA, SERESC, etc.), school counseling professors at each state university, and ASCA. I also have been in contact with Governor Lynch's office to have the proclamation for National School Counselor Week signed. Finally, next month's newsletter will include a plea for personal success stories, narratives, qualitative examples, etc., of how counselors across the state are making a difference with their students. We hope to use these examples as "golden nuggets" in press releases and other promotional materials to help publicize our profession.
Proclamation from Governor Lynch was brought to the board meeting. Took a picture with president, president elect, and past president holding the proclamation. Kathy will contact former public relations chair for an idea on how to display or store the proclamation
By-laws
Will be done by the March meeting by the subcommittee
Ethics
Susan Theberge will take this chair position. She is looking for direction from the board
Professional Recognition
Report:
● This year rather than mailing information about nominating a School Counselor, emailed all the Principals in NH. We also posted information on the website and sent out a reminder email blast to our members.
● We have received 10 nominations for School Counselor of the Year
● 5 High School, 2 Middle, 2 Elementary, and 1 K-8
● So far I have mailed notification letters to all of the nominees and spoken to 2 of the nominees who were not currently members. Both plan to renew their membership to NHSCA in order to remain eligible.
● I have communicated with a number of people who would be willing to participate in the selection committee and need to pick a date and location for the meeting. We should have at least 2 selection committee members from each level (elementary, middle, and high).
● I have reserved a spot for the Eddies celebration and am awaiting a bill which I will forward to Annette for payment when I receive it.
● I am hoping that once determinations have been made about this years winners by the selection committee, that I could have some members of the Board assist with the School Presentations in order to have at least 2 Board Members present at these events.
During board meeting:
Questions about billing for items required: Either have bill sent to treasurer or for small purchases collect receipts.
Newsletter
no report
During board meeting:
● Articles have been sent in for upcoming newsletter
● Extra newsletters were brought to the board meeting that can be given to SAU offices and those that had been recruited to present at the conference
● Consensus at the board meeting is that members like electronic newsletter
Advocacy
Report: Advocacy Chair, Kim Lavoie is looking for another passionate person to take over the chair position. Please contact her if you have any interest.
During the meeting:
Need for new chair to carry on work that was started last year during the advocacy conference
Fall conference
see present elect report
Scholarship
Report: Julianne Cleary from Keene State College, is the winner of this year’s Jo Hayslip Memorial Scholarship. We had five applicants from all four graduate schools. Thank you to Pamelyn Blair and Joy Livengood for their work on the committee.
LIAISONS
Guidance Director’s Liaison
Report: We are looking to have a guest speaker in May to address social media and technology. We had our first ever Skype meeting with a gentleman from the Common Application and it went fabulously!! The President of the NHAGD has announced that he will not be running next year and has put out a call for people to step in and do their part.
During the board meeting:
● An email has been sent out with a request for a new president for the guidance director association
● It will be important to keep the connection between guidance director association, NHSCA and DOE
Department of Education Liaison
No report
Student Intern Liaison
During the meeting:
An examination of course requirements from each counseling program was done. There are marked difference. Suggestions were made for Brent to connect with Susan Theberge because she may be interested in working with him on this topic. Brent would like to help graduate students get the most out of their internships.
Welcome Teresa Morris from New Hampshire Gifted and Talented Association (5:15 PM)
Teresa Morris shared information about gifted and talented programs in NH:
● There are currently no NH mandates regarding gifted and talented
● 13 school districts in state have gifted programs
● concern that these students need some emotional social needs met but because they test well not always are noticed.
● Sometimes these children dropout don't find a career path
● There is a need for advocates
● Resource www.nhage.org.
● There are behavior check lists available to help identify gifted and talented students
Dinner (5:30)
Old Business
Discussion around the possibility of having a spring conference plan about data usage in school counseling.
● Karen Herrington from CSCORE would be the speaker.
● CSCORE has worked with many states regarding data training.
● Handout given at meeting notes with information from CSCORE about what they do in their trainings.
● Discussion on how we feel about this topic, when to offer it, number of days, recalled data was an interest at level sharing from fall conference. NHEAFF is free of cost in the spring. Celia will check in with Karen to see when she is available. Beth and Amy will work with her.
New Business
Volunteers needed to help present awards for professional recognition
Adjournment 6:30