JEANC ANNUAL MEETING MINUTES
Saturday, January 30, 2010
CNPA Office | 708 10th St. | Sacramento, CA 95814
Present: Sarah Nichols (President), Tracy Sena (President-elect), Randy Hamm (Treasurer), Karl Grubaugh, Ed Galdrikian, Ellen Austin, Lynn McDaniel, Rachel West (Secretary), Joe Wirt (CNPA)
I. Call to Order: (10:08)
II. Approval of May Minutes (10:11)
A. Ed moved to approve. Karl seconded. Motion passed.
III. Communications (10:11)
A. Most communication has been positive reinforcement about our convention being helpful.
B. Sarah received information that JEANC member Tonya Sparks from Ukiah High School has passed away. Sarah will send a note of condolence to her family c/o Ukiah High.
IV. Reports of Officers (10:12)
A. Treasurer:
i. Net worth as of Dec. 31 was $14, 175.04.
ii. Special projects: convention and annual contest take place over two years and accounting can take time to reconcile. If all accounts are settled, we will be up $400. However, if accounts are not settled, we are standing $1700 in the red.
iii. Total cost of convention was $13,072.16. There are still some convention accounting issues to be resolved with Steve O’D at CSJI. Some schools still need to pay registration. Harker Academy, adviser Chris Darren, still owes $1275 for student and adviser registration. Avenal High School adviser, Amy Wilkinson, owes $455 for student and adviser registration. She expressed that West Hills College – Coalinga, contact person Matt Loya, would pay her bill, but it has not been received. Past due invoices will be issued by Joe at CNPA.
iv. We need to establish a formal way to send invoices that does not require multiple people to send repeats – as well as to avoid disorganization in the files.
v. Related to iii and iv above, Sarah addressed the issue of registration scholarships for the convention at this time. Scholarships were established because we were concerned about registration numbers. The hope was that offering scholarships would help meet critical mass. Steve was the point person on who would get the scholarships. Unfortunately, a lack of organization meant that we didn’t get payment for some people, as well as a lack of information from the schools that utilized the scholarships. There was a lack of paperwork. Next time we need to create a form that will be on file as a way to contact advisers later, as well as have a point person who will be in charge. We need to create an official scholarship organizer position for the next convention. Ellen commended everyone who helped organize the convention. Scholarships account for $135 adviser registrations at Rio Americano, Luther Burbank, and Hiram Johnson. Student registration outstanding scholarship money is $220.
vi. As a way to communicate information for future registration and member sign-ups, Michelle said that it is possible to build into the online registration form that all board members who need to act on registrations (treasurer, Joe at CNPA, president, etc.) receive notices via email. Sarah suggested we set something up similar to a Google spreadsheet, rather than receiving emails. This would allow all parties to access to a central document, rather than a central person. Michelle said there is a way to do that if we want to increase the cost to cover a paid organization. There will typically be a $4 per registrant fee. However, nothing we have come up with yet is a perfect solution. If we can get people trained to use the back end of the JEANC website, that will be the best way to get the information across and solve the problem of having a single location for information. Michelle will be sending a video she created on Jing to teach everyone how to post a story to our website.
vii. Annual contest: We are to the good in both the 2008 and 2009 contests. Outstanding accounts for this year are Monte Vista High School and Palo Alto High School.
viii. Membership update: many of our members have expired memberships. We do not have a way to check if people enter the contest using the member price, so there are some people who are getting a discount without actually being members. Michelle suggested we create a checkbox on the contest entry for members, but then we check to see if people are members before their entries are processed. Tracy believes there needs to be a way to pay directly on our own website and not through PayPal. Sarah believes this would be an important investment for the organization to grow. Michelle says this fee is estimated at $1200 annually plus a percentage of each cost. We would need to get our own secure server to be able to do this. This is such an expense, Michelle does not know if we would be able to get our money back. Sarah suggested partnering up with someone else in a similar place.
ix. Related to ix above, Randy suggested asking JEA national to pay for our annual fee. A suggestion to JEA is they have a secure server for affiliate members to use. If they raised the affiliate fees from $55 to $100, they become the host to all of the affiliate members secure sites. This is something that should be proposed to JEA as a way to ask them for more support and help out many other affiliate organizations. We should find other organizations that would support us in this pitch. Sarah will send a message to contacts in other states to ask for feedback about this idea. She will send it to Tracy, who will take on getting it to JEA national.
B. President: (11:26)
i. Thanks again to EVERYONE who had anything to do with the convention in any capacity. Sarah really appreciates everyone’s help and the fact that many JEANC board members brought students.
ii. Sarah has been working with Julie Dodd and Linda Barrington in the JEA mentoring group and is looking for some more mentors for our area. Rick Brown is retiring, and the mentor group is looking for current advisers who are nearing retirement and able to commit to a two-year term. Please send her names if there is anyone you know who would like to apply.
iii. Congratulations to everyone who went to the Washington D.C. JEA National Convention. Many Northern California schools won Best of Show, Write Off Awards, etc. There are also many Northern California schools that are Crown Award winners from NSPA. Sarah sent letters congratulating these schools.
iv. Senate Bill SB438 is being supported highly. Sarah sent a letter of support from JEANC. The bill is designed to ensure that charter schools in California will be held to the same guarantees in Education Code that all other public schools are.
v. Upcoming events: Boldfaced Journalism at San Francisco State on Feb. 27. Please attend if possible as a way to support them in their endeavors, especially as their program is struggling financially. Fresno State is also having their J-Day. Chico State will not be hosting their March J-Day, so we should think about having a Sacramento area J-Day in lieu of Chico. Karl moves that we have a one-day journalism workshop in late September/October. Tracy seconded. Motion passed.
V. Old Business (11:39)
A. JEANC Awards
i. Award winners have been chosen and will be posted on the website this week.
ii. Michelle reported that the contest opened in August, and pushed the deadline back several dates. All entries came in the last week of the registration time. All entries were digital. We recommend changing the deadline for future contests to take place at the end of the current school year. The issue with that would be yearbook delivery dates, and we would need to discuss how much that would impact our submissions. Sarah suggested that we have two dates, spring delivery and summer/fall delivery.
iii. Judges reported that they loved the new digital format. They liked the convenience of the online submissions for winners and not having to deal with mailing entries.
iv. Timeline: the contest closed on Dec. 1, judges were sent entries by Dec. 15, and they were given a month to complete their entries. However, a month was probably too long considering the digital submissions. Sarah suggested we need to figure out how to get the submissions to the judges much more quickly if we want to have a May deadline, or we set the deadline earlier and cut out the option for some schools to include work from their last issue.
v. Regarding iii above, Ellen suggested that we make the contest results available before the school year ended, even if we don’t have the physical awards sent to kids until summer. This would help give administrators and other school officials notice that their students/programs received awards before the end of the school year. Michelle stated that this is possible, but we need to decide if it is worth it to cut the possibility of entering final issue information. Karl would like to ensure that schools can enter work from the entire school year, not have a May deadline so the information can be there before the end of the school year. Sarah believes we need to meet the need of students getting their awards in time for them to be recognized during their school year. The original idea of the contest was to have it in October because the winners would be announced for the first time at our convention. Tracy suggested syncing our contest with another large contest so that students are working on entries at the same time. This way we would have results back before summer for schools that are at-risk of program cuts. Karl said he likes that the contests are sprinkled throughout the year as a way to enter the contests in an on-going fashion. Sarah said the spring is the most difficult time to enter yearbook contests and we need to keep that in mind. Michelle suggested moving the deadline up to mid-April, after the spring JEA national convention. That way we offer the ability to enter deadlines from the prior spring, but we make sure to run the contest within a month and have results back to schools by Memorial Day. Sarah suggested creating a category for a “final issue of the spring” so that if advisers want to turn in that category they can. Ellen added that there is a hole in contests currently, so if we created a “final spring issue” category we would fill that gap. For a June 1 announcement date, we can plan the submission deadline for the last Friday of April (not date specific). Sarah asked if we can each agree to find one judge who has not already judged to send and send his/her name to Michelle and Rachel by March 1 so we have a variety of judges to ask. Karl pointed out that doing this means we would give up the “sales pitch” that contest awards will be announced at a convention or J-Day in the fall. Randy clarified that we would be asking these judges to complete their tasks in the first two weeks of May. Ed moved to change the annual contest from Oct. 15 to an end of April deadline, moving the Fall contest to a Spring contest, effective this year. The new contest will run April 15 to April 15. Michelle seconded. Motion passed.
vi. Tracy suggested creating a CD of winning PDFs to distribute to members as the “Best of the NorCal Press.” Sarah suggested doing this and selling them in the bookstore when we have a convention.
vii. PDF size will not be a problem if we recommend that the final issues be uploaded on issuu.com. It may be a problem if staffs have to create profiles away from our website. We will have to figure this out when we set up the registration online.
viii. We would like to purchase a JEANC embosser for the certificate labels for future contests.
C. Convention reports (12:54)
i. Much of this was discussed under the treasurer report above.
ii. Sarah believes we need a more specific guideline for parents/chaperones who are attending with students. Many parents attended sessions without paying because they were “the chaperone” for their school. Her recommendation is to create this in time for the next convention. Being welcoming is a goal, but we are still a business. Ed agrees that if the adults there are there to take care of children, but attending sessions, they should be paid registrants. Tracy would like to see that we have data from the responsible adults so we can track down a responsible party if we have an issue with a student. This needs to be in writing. We should know their cell phone numbers AND where they are staying. Everyone agreed.
iii. Randy asked about the vendors sponsoring a portion of the convention or donating money. Sarah said that all of our vendors chose to sponsor something this time. In the past, asking for donations only meant we made more money. This time the dance was not sponsored, so we had to pay for that ourselves. Sarah mentioned that the dance was not heavily attended, so we may want to rethink this next time. Ellen suggested that we do something different next time since students do not seem to attend. Sarah said that it was also discussed to have a convention for only a single night, which would mean that the nightly events would be different.
iv. Tracy asked that everyone who chaired a committee or event create a report for his/her specific committee and that we set a deadline to do that by March 1. Please put these and any related documents on the Google group. Sarah reminded everyone that there are prefixes for all different topics. “C_” should be in front of any convention documents being posted on the group.
v. Ed said that he did not think the bookstore was profitable enough to continue and should be put off. Randy and Sarah agreed since we lost money on this.
VI. Induction of New President (1:07)
i. Sarah would like to thank everyone for being so helpful and responsive in her tenure as president. She would like to thank Past-President, Don, for being so helpful when she needed help, as well as Ed for his history and input. She is excited for Tracy to take over, since she is going to be a great leader for the next two years. She presented her the presidential gavel. On behalf of the board, for being such a gracious leader, Tracy presented Sarah with an award for her excellent leadership.
VII. New Business (1:12)
A. Funding requests
i. Sarah created a basic Google form for any requests for funding. The information required in this form is: if the group/adviser is a JEANC member, the group’s purpose, the nature of their request, where any other funding is coming from, and how the information will be presented. Sarah would like this on the website, and then it would be voted on by the board. Tracy asked if we should determine an annual number for charitable donations. Sarah believes we should allocate $1000 for 2010, with the provision that if any is left, it rolls over into the following years. Ellen asked if people are able to make donations to JEANC for their own specific purpose. The answer is yes. Sarah moved that we allocate $1000, the remainder of which will accrue from year to year and grow to be awarded to applicants using our online form based on current JEANC membership and awarded by board approval. Ellen seconded. Motion passed. Joe wants us to think about cross-publicity, since CNPA administers specific grants as well. Randy suggested a link on the website that connects to the CNPA grant website. Sarah said she was not envisioning a school or adviser specific request, but this should be for an event or program needing support and is in our member area.
ii. Ellen updated us on the original request that caused the above resolution. “O-Town Teen Times” is an organization sponsored by two journalism advisers in Oakland who are putting together an out of school newspaper with many urban at-risk kids on their own time. Many people involved in scholastic journalism have been helping them with donations. Last fall they got involved with a matching grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and the request for funding from JEANC was as part of that matching grant. JEANC donated $500. The advisers did hit their matching grant numbers, so received the same amount from the B&MGF. Having our name as a sponsor may have helped them get more donations.
B. Journalist of the Year
i. We need to create an ad hoc committee to judge the JOY entries for our region, and then our entries need to go head to head with the Southern California JEA so we can establish a California competitor to enter into the JEA National JOY competition. Currently, all entries are coming to CNPA, either directly mailed or via Lynn. Sarah, Ellen, Rachel are willing to serve on the committee. Sarah will chair. Entries must be judged before March 12 to get entries judged against SoCal at the CALJEAC convention. Sarah is happy to do that.
C. Summer workshops
i. Digital RENOvation: Last weekend in June at UNR. Planning meeting to take place later today. There will be more information forthcoming.
ii. Adviser one-day workshop: Tracy would like to see us offer an adviser workshop again this summer. This is similar to two summers ago when we offered three at multiple locations. Joe informed us that the publisher of the Modesto Bee offered to have any kind of event we want. Rachel is willing to help with this, and we can check with Don to see if he would help. Dates for each location do not need to coincide. Rates would be member and non-member, and out expenses should be minimal. Sarah said we should check in with Greg to see if we can offer one at Fresno. Ed moves we have summer adviser workshops – one in the Bay Area, one in the Valley, dates and additional programs TBA. Sarah seconded. Motion passed.
D. Membership chairperson
i. Sarah and Randy believe that there should be someone solely dedicated to maintaining and increasing membership. Randy has been doing these duties as treasurer because of the membership payments, however there really is enough work to do that is outreach oriented for a person to be solely involved in this. Michelle would be willing to do this for a year as a trial. Tracy appoints Michelle as the 2010 membership chairperson. Randy has names of people who went online to register to join and never paid their dues.
E. Plans and projections for 2010
i. Adviser workshops as discussed above.
ii. We will have another meeting before the end of the school year. Tentatively this is set for May 8 at Palo Alto High School. If you cannot physically be there it is a location with the possibility to Skype into.
iii. Ellen wants to remind everyone that there is an opening for the JEA Executive Director and she would like to promote the position. Applications are being accepted now and the position begins on July 1. She believes that there are so many strong advisers here in Northern California, we should promote this position to our regional talent.
VIII. Good of the Order (2:10)
IX. Adjournment (2:11)