MEEOA Board Meeting

May 10, 2002

KVTC

*People in attendance: Linda Ives, Teresa Smith, Sara Henry, Rusty Brown, William Ellis, Chris Yardley

*Call to Order

*Review of minutes

Sara motioned to accept.

Linda seconded.

Accepted.

*Policy Seminar Update

Teresa had a great time and everything went very well. The students did a great job. Teresa will probably take the lead next year.

*Budget Planning

*Treasure's Report

Received Policy Seminar Reimbursement.

checking = $2,769.17

savings = $5,241.28

Outstanding costs - some printing and postage fees from the forum with Baldacci. Also the room fee (?) and the food cost (?). Potentially $300 outstanding.

The web domain for MEEOA costs about $25 per year (to get MEEOA.org)

Report accepted.

*Another Forum This Year?

Sara would like to see this happen again. However, the Board was not involved. Only Michele and Sara attended. Should the Board be more involved if we do another one?

It appeared to be more of a First District event. The timing was not ideal -- Friday night, three-hour drive each way. These are some of the reasons attendance might have been low.

It has to be a neutral function. We can't take "political" sides.

If we organize one as the Board, we need to do some things differently. Why was the first one successful? The goal was to educate Maine citizens about educational opportunity programs. We did this, but there are a lot more people to reach.

Did we promote MEEOA enough?

If we are going to be politically active as a Board and an organization, how do we do this without taking political sides?

Visibility?

Fact sheet from MEEOA about candidates running for office? Make a subcommittee to do this. Start with candidates for Governor. Will we be mailing a set of questions to each candidate to answer?

It looks like we need to form a committee for political advocacy. Sara is agreeing to chair the committee, but would like to have another Board member as part of the committee. Do we want to have Board members serving on committees? Is the Board becoming overcommitted?

One idea is to have committees, without Board members attending the committee meetings, but the committee would have a Board member as a contact.

So what committees do we need? We already have an Annual Conference Committee. Others -- Publicity, Policy Seminar, Political Advocacy.

*2003 Conference Update

We have turned in the non-MBNA summary form. If this is approved, then it goes to the scheduling committee. It will probably be about a month until we hear.

Rusty received some good suggestions at NEOA regarding speakers. The tentative dates are January 8-10, 2003.

*Strategic Plan

The old strategic plan is very similar to where we are headed today. What do we need to do with the current strategic plan? Let's look at NEOA's strategic plan. Sara feels that if we look at what has already been put on paper (1997) in conjunction with what NEOA has, we don't need to do much else. The things we have been discussing all fit within these two sources.

Sara is going to make sure we have the correct Strategic plan from 1997. Then we can go from there.

*New Business

Next Meeting - June 13 at 12 Noon at Sara's house.