University/Schools Alliance
Executive Board Meeting
December 8, 2010 at 3:30 PM
CDAS Office

Attending: Fred MacCormack-State Wellness Centers
Howard Isenberg Open Door, Inc.
Kristen Blanchard, SODAT Delaware
Lorie Tudor, DPNA
Harry Baetjer, Tower Hill School
Nancy Chase, UD Wellspring
Nicole Freedman, YMCA Resource Center

Staff Attending: Roberta Gealt, USA Program Director
Mary Perno, USA Project Coordinator

Discussions: The November minutes were reviewed and approved by Howard and Kristen.

DFC Grant: We are proceeding with our tenth and final year of the Drug Free Communities grant. Due to changes in federal regulations, we can no longer pay for food for any meetings out of the grant, and we are trying to figure out how to deal with that.

SPF-SIG:The SPF-SIG strategic plan has been approved at the federal and state levels. The documents for the SPF-SIG Requests ForProposals (which will specify how funds are to be disseminated competitively to communities) are still circulating through state and federal channels however, gathering signatures. The same is true for the Substance Abuse Prevention and Treatment Block Grant. USA has finally been definitively told that it cannot apply for the SPF-SIG funds due to a conflict of interest for Roberta Gealt, who works on the assessment and evaluation for the SPF-SIG.USA may still be able to apply for the youth-focused funds from the Block Grant at this time. Roberta is seeking more clarification. There is some uncertainty as to whether an organization may apply for funds from both sources—the SPF-SIG and the Block Grant. Roberta also asked for clarification with regards to overlap of these funds and Drug Free Communities funding. Jack Claypoole, Administrator of the Drug Free Communities Support Program was not aware of any such proscriptions.

DUI Tree: Mary collaborated with the Office of Highway Safety and A. I. DuPont Children's Hospital by placing a tree in the Emergency Department. The tree has white lights on it. Each Monday, the statistics come out about DUI injuries or fatalities. If there are injuries, the white bulbs are changed to green, if there is a death from DUI, the white light is then changed to red. So far, we have 28 green bulbs on the tree. The board seemed to like this idea and Lorie suggested that we do something like that on a billboard. Roberta commented that Yvonne Bunch wants to do billboards. Lorie Tudor volunteered to call Yvonne about it.

Town Hall Meetings 2011: We will move forward with training for the Town Hall Meetings at Buena Vista. We will follow the same format as last year, but coordinate it with Yvonne Bunch's Step Up Program. We will also use the Untitled song by Simple Plan to open each of the Town Hall Meetings. We don't know if they will be funded or not this year. The Federal Government only funds them every other year.

Physician's Conference: We don't have any new information on this, but Linda Brasel is moving to Tennessee.

Policy Summit Meeting: We plan to hold this again next September.

Roberta will be presenting to the Newark City Council at an open meeting on Monday.

The next USA Board meeting will be on JANUARY 12, 2011 at 3:30 at the CDAS office.