Pennsylvania Association for Adult and Continuing Education

Board Meeting

June 10, 2003

Attending:

Ruth Love-Schooley; Linda Herr; Mary Hohensee; Mary Kay Peterson; Joan Leopold; Dave Manzo; Chuck Klinger; Mary Anne Varacalli; Karen Warner; Bob McNeill; Chris Coro

Minutes:

May minutes were approved with changes.

Executive Director Report:

• Center for Independent Living will no longer assign sign language interpreters for the Mid-Winter Conference. PAACE will have to make own arrangements for interpreter.
• Membership Directory changes will be given to Tana to put in next newsletter.

Officers Reports:

President:

Dave will get all his Mid-Winter Conference reports to Mary Kay.

1^st Vice President:

Deferred till discussion of Budget & Old Business

2^nd Vice President:

Bob reported that:

• He sent a “cleaned up” copy of the By-laws to Tana for review.
• He would like to put together a group to work on Operations Manual
• Dates need to be put on bottom of documents to indicate when revisions were made

Treasurer:

Mary reported that there was $5,200 made in dispersements, but that we should be going into a quiet time of spending. Mary said that the figure of $36,500 cash balance is lowest that it’s ever been. The Treasurer’s report was accepted and approved.

Budget Discussion was held because of low amount of balance:

• Proposed budget without Mid-Winter Conference would have a $20,970 deficit.
• What’s causing this low balance? Is membership low? Is interest low? Are conference costs to participants too low?
• Where could we cut expenses or how can we increase income?

Finance Committee will look at surrounding states’ organization fees for membership and conferences.

We could possibly expand membership by approaching Corrections Ed. These folks expressed an interest in having PAACE set up a Corrections Education Division for them. Perhaps more Corrections Ed. workers would then join PAACE.

Member services: we should not cut member services or we might cut off some of our members.

Changes to Conference costs: Mary suggested we have three options – 1) run a deficit; 2) raise membership fees; 3) raise cost of conference for participants

We looked at some of the Conference costs and where we could make changes:

Meals: PAACE is underwriting a good percentage in meal costs. For instance:

Meal Participant Cost Actual Cost

Legislative Lunch $14 $17.50

Thursday Lunch $14 $16.88

Banquet $20 $30.63

Box Lunch $12 $18.00

PAACE also underwrites the continental breakfast plus breaks at a cost of $2700 and Market Place Opening at a cost of $6100.

Some changes could include:

• Raising the cost of meals
• Have activities without the meals (people could go somewhere else to eat)
• Ask vendors to sponsor a break (vendor fees were recently raised)
• Do away with serving meat at the Market Place opening
• Limit free drink tickets to soda, beer, wine (no hard liquor)
• Charge Programs $25 for Market Place space
• Look into getting corporate sponsors (don’t count on this yearly though)

It was decided to table approving the budget until the August meeting. We can then come back with some ideas for membership increases and/or conference increases. We should look at 2 – 5% increases over the next 4 – 5 years to start covering costs (make increases incremental).

Mary was granted approval to pay operating expenses for June and July until budget is approved in August.

Secretary:

none

Division Reports:

ESL: not in attendance

AB/SE: Chuck reported that a data base was created for the AB/SE members.

CHE:

CEA/CPA Board members will do some articles for the newsletter. Will co-sponsor Professional Development Conference – Verizon will do an Education Fair.

TLC: not in attendance

Family Literacy: none

Workforce: not in attendance

Regional Representatives Reports:

East: none

Central: not in attendance

West: not in attendance

Committee Reports:

Awards: none

Membership:

Kay Lynn will be able to start attending Board meetings in August. She contacted Mary Mingle to get some membership ideas that Mary had originally started.

Nominations and Elections: none

PDE:

There has not been any PDE representation recently on the PAACE Board and it is significant that we have this representation. This lack of visibility becomes an issue; they are a good source of getting information. Lack of PDE representation is profoundly missed. Dave will make contact with Danielle Guyer to see if this can be remedied.

Publications:

Deadline for next newsletter is Monday, June 16^th.

Strategic Decision Making:

Bring Operation Manual up to date.

Technology: not in attendance

Old Business:

Mid-Winter Conference:

• Post cards are ready to be mailed for Call for Presenters (form will also be on PAACE web site)
• Call for presenters will be summer newsletter
• Conference theme: “Change in Adult Education – Global Change”
• Galen Godbey, General Session Speaker; Myron Hallock, Honorary Chair
• Comments and suggestions from last year’s conference are being looked at
• Looking at changing Wednesday night to something different than sessions
• Will try to get Tom Stitcht for a session (Danielle also wanted to have him so maybe PDE will help sponsor)
• Participants will have an option between a tote bag or brief case (price basically the same)
• Pouch name tags (same as last year) will be purchased (Bob will try to get a sponsor for nametags)
• 127 sessions last year was too many – will look into having fewer this year

Technology to use for conference – Ed Green’s proposal vs. PeopleWare.

• We should send Ed Green a thank you for his presentation, but we’re not ready to move in that direction.
• We already have the PeopleWare software which was a huge expense – we need to make it work.
• Chris Coro offered to house the software and have staff run reports.
• We should get training for 12 people at a cost of $2000
• Chris will call PeopleWare to set up a training date in July for 12 people at Northampton Community College.
• Members attending training should have questions and expectations beforehand
• Approval was made for Mary to pay the 2003/04 license agreement to People Ware.

New Business:

Discussion was held on the correct way to begin a new division in PAACE – specifically a Corrections Education Division. By-laws state that 2^nd Vice President can begin a new division based on membership interest and needs. It was suggested that it might also need to have 25 PAACE membership signatures. Proposed Chair for this division is Rob Bender from Graterford. Bob will contact Rob to see how much interest there really is for a Corrections Education Division.

Next meeting: August 12^th – Nittany Lion Inn, Penn State

Meeting was adjourned

Minutes submitted by:

Karen Warner, Secretary