JEANC Board Meeting
September 13, 2014
Location: Virtual Hangout

1.0 Call to Order
at 9:07 a.m.
In attendance Sarah Nichols, Tracy Anne Sena, Rachel West, Michelle Balmeo, Beatrice Motamedi (Paul Kandell and Matt Johanson entered hangout later in the meeting)

2.0 Approval of Minutes
Meeting minutes from Jan. 11, 2014 are here for review.
motion to approve from Sarah, Michelle seconds
everyone in favor, minutes approved

3.0 Communications (Rachel)
Most communication will show up later in agenda (6.4/6.5 biggest items)
Ellen Austin is resigning from the board effective at the end of September. She is currently cleaning up membership stuff, and may want to come back at some point.
Responses to e-blast from advisers excited about J-Day, including unfamiliar names
Sarah: adviser asking about needing to attend J-Day with students, also another inquiry, but not sure if advisers who contacted her registered for J-Day.
Sarah: Kickstart Days–Sarah’s students attended workshops both days and they all had an amazing experience and felt sessions were impactful. Michelle should be commended for amazing event.
Rachel: Michelle Balmeo as Dow Jones Distinguished Adviser communication

4.0 Reports of officers and committees (Point people agreed upon at January meeting)
4.1 President – Rachel
nothing to report at this time, will show up later in the agenda
4.2 Treasurer – Don
Don sent report yesterday
Rachel: We are in the red a little bit, but didn’t expect to make money on Kickstart days.
Tracy and Sarah say not a concern because Randy said to spend more money
Rachel: still seeing profit, awards have changed a bit because of free entries, but we are also paying higher number of judges because of more entries.
Board will double-check numbers for Kickstart day with Don before finalizing report. Michelle sent the board a copy of the report she shared with Christina at SFSU after the event.
Michelle: Suggestion–Talk with Don about cross-checking the payments for awards vs. the actual entries, but don’t go back to advisers to follow up with missed payments from last year, just implement moving forward.
Board will need updated treasurer report in the next few weeks to reconcile numbers.

4.3 J-Day – Sarah/Paul
Sarah: need second round of promotion, board decides on listing times and topics but not concrete schedule on both promo and website.
Michelle checked number of registrants: 75 registrants, Michelle will bring 20-30, Paul approx. 60, Hayward will bring 15
(Sequoia, El Camino, Homestead, E. Bakersfield, Stockton, Enoch High, already registered)
Beatrice will support with a second JEA blast, focusing on the fact it’s a JEANC event, not a Paly one, asks for photos of students who are not from Palo Alto to include in blast
Tentative Keynote: Elena from Palo Alto Weekly
Michelle: Concern about registration being accurate so we can plan for lunch
JEANC is providing pizza and water; if students want something else, they’ll go off site.
Sarah will send Beatrice the promo and Beatrice will check the copy with Sarah before sending out the JEA blast.
Board agrees to set budget for event, to be approved closer to the date, which will cover a certain number of attendees and will include stick-on nametags for students to facilitate networking, morning check-in treat (like donuts) + mini water bottles, coffee for advisers in the cafe.
Michelle: school journalism.org, sent over reporters notebooks for free for convention, Sarah will follow up on that.
Paul needs to help delegate day-of activities, can happen via email
as long as program folks talk off-line (Sarah and Paul talked after the meeting adjourned and sent out a follow up email).

4.4 Website – Tracy
No website update from Tracy or Michelle, website is fine and functional, just getting dated.
Discussion about whether it is worth it to populate with new stuff during the J-Day or whether it should be a restructuring effort with a specific chunk of time to complete that, and if it’s necessary if people are just visiting website for specific purposes (like convention and contests).
Will revisit at next meeting if necessary.
4.5 Membership – Ellen
Rachel: have some new members, but needs to touch base with Ellen before she officially leaves.
4.6 Summer workshop – Michelle
We had two summer workshop days, lot of support from Christina Azucar from SFSU. Everything was pretty smooth, costs balanced out, and board gave $200 donation to SFSU journalism.
could be more lucrative if more advanced notice for people to plan to attend
Worth considering focusing on what schools need as opposed to “fancy” sessions–school from LA enjoyed Don’s InDesign class and said it was just what they needed.
Christina willing to do this again, would like for it to hit more of their target recruits, branch out beyond suburban schools, so think about outreach piece for different demographics.
4.7 Annual Contest report – Michelle, Kristy
Discussion on who sent final report out to group–possibly Laura.
4.8 State Director – Beatrice (went earlier in the meeting)
Beatrice will send out blast for Journalist of the Year (JOY) soon, rules and rubric coming out Sept. 22 on website with CA deadlines and last year’s portfolio for archiving purposes
JOY will be all digital this year and advisers who don’t have the resources will need more support for this.
Sarah: scholarship factor = we are choosing based on JEANC and that could affect other CA students.
JEA has aligned all its deadlines to Oct. 15, March 15, state director will enter statewide entry by March 15, so JEANC needs to coordinate with other CA groups who might be having own contests.
Board sets Feb. 1 deadline for scholarship, Feb. 15 deadline for judges.
Sarah: the website has tutorial for tech stuff (PDF), how to build WordPress portfolio, use embed code, rubric is skill based, not presentation based, there are also samples on website–Ina’s portfolio (2010), Taylor’s (WordPress–current national winner)
JEANC board can serve as liaisons, but not if they have a student in the contest, part of our job to help with students who need that support.
JEANC could offer one day workshop around JOY, regional workshops on same day, to help with level of support they need–will consider this for next year’s contest.
Beatrice will pull together J-Day only piece this weekend, proof it with group, and then send it out as a JEA blast.
5.0 Old Business
5.1 Bylaws update and approval
Rachel made changes based on feedback, sent new document out, everything in red is new language, can discuss now or have an online vote.
According to Ed, protocol is that the board has to agree that these are the changes, and then include update for membership to agree to changes when election ballots are sent out.
Discussion about whether people have had enough time to look at revised bylaws and when they need to be sent out to members.
Rachel will send out email to board this weekend with the document, and ask for yea or nay during a voting window until end of September.
5.2 Non-convention write-offs
tabled until January
5.3 Communication
tabled until January
6.0 New Business
6.1 2015 convention date and facilities contact and plan
Sacramento convention–Don is willing to make initial contact to get save the date for Sacramento space but won’t be contact person for convention itself.
Paul suggests using Paly MAC, but board decides that something more neutral would be more ideal.
Michelle, odd juxtaposition to offer more expensive two-day convention and then opposing year offer half of that for no expense (this year’s J-Day).
Sarah says part of that is because Paly MAC opening created a large event, but ideally in the next off year we should have multiple J-Days and not one concentrated event.
Discussion about high convention costs and possibly moving it to something that is university hosted, like at Sacramento State or SFSU.
January meeting, discuss more in detail, start booking a year out.
Rachel says she will investigate possibility of using Sac State and will follow up
Fallback will be to do same model for next year (Sacramento hotel/convention center), and then revisit for 2017.
SFSU drawback is hotel costs, and 2018 convention will be in SF as well, which is why it’s not an ideal location.
Steve is having an event at Chico on Oct. 4, enough events this fall for scholastic journalism which is a good thing (even if we don’t have Sacramento J-Day scheduled).

6.2 Journalist of the Year updates
see Beatrice’s update
6.3 Board member recruitment and outreach
The board discussed a need more people to serve as board members; if we know any advisers to bring in, please bring them in. Rachel said ideally 15 people on the board and we have 9 or 10.
Recommend/reach out to see if they are interested so we have less to take on.
Sarah suggests window of time so we are all in same room at J-Day and can introduce ourselves, Rachel suggests coffee and adult area, Paul suggests using MAC cafe.
6.4 Statewide journalism organization per Steve O’D
Good idea, but how would this work budget-wise?
Rachel has brought it to the board, but we need more information.
6.5 Mentor program sponsorship request (Rachel)
Linda Barrington (JEA mentor program) is asking JEANC for stipend support for CA mentors in JEA mentor program, minimum of 25 percent of stipend, ($1250,) asking for us to commit for this year, and discuss in 2015 for the addition of more mentors because of our large state,
Background: Southern CA is supporting stipend because they wanted more mentors, Yellow Chair (donor) is asking JEA why Norcal is not doing this as well, if we paid stipends, then we’d get more mentors.
Sarah says this request is a re-up, not a new expense.
JEANC has two JEA mentors Casey Nichols (five mentees) and Katherine Swan (three mentees).
Historically there aren’t additional people wanting to serve as mentors in our area, (Steve does own mentor piece, not part of this).
Mentor: generally retired teacher, some ongoing reports/narratives, do classroom observations, do mentor forum at conventions, training at JEA Advisers Institute in Vegas, (Nick Ferrentinos helped create mentoring training piece, but also stepped away).
SoCal has three mentors.
Rachel/Michelle, no memory of approving the funding.
YC makes $20,000 contribution every year, but there is a discrepancy about who would be paying stipends because of the variety of resources states have and how JEA handles the funding.
Sarah is in favor of funding what we have in the past, not in favor of increasing it because we have no additional mentors.
Paul would like to continue what we’ve done in past, do outreach to see if we can expand the program, and then have a discussion about what to do then
Paul asks if we are getting benefit, Sarah says yes because new JEA members are sticking around more and getting more involved.
Suggestion to start tracking people by getting mentee to come to J-Day second year, come to board meeting third year, seeing if they enter contests–come up with some metrics to measure.
Michelle suggests offering financial support in relation to the number of mentees instead of mentor each year.
Rachel: currently mentors receive $2,500 per year regardless of number of mentees.
Rachel asks Paul to type up questions about program, Rachel will talk to Linda Barrington to address them. We’ll pull treasurer records to see what we’ve done in the past.
Mentor program sponsorship response will be brought up again in January.

7.0 Adjournment
adjourned at 11:03
Journalism Day at Paly on Sept. 27, 2014
Next meeting is scheduled for January 10, 2015 at CNPA office in Sacramento.