University/Schools Alliance Executive Meeting
Wednesday, January 13, 2010 @ 3:30 PM
UD Cooperative Extension Office

Attending: Howard Isenberg, Jo-Ann West, Cindy Genau, LTC. Greg Snapp, Rosemary Brooks, Harry Baetjer, Linda Brasel

Staff Attending: Roberta Gealt, Mary Perno

Discussions:

The November minutes were reviewed and approved. USA did not meet in December.

Grants-DFC-The carry over request was completed before the holidays, when at the last minute it was learned that the forms had changed in the three months since they were received. It is currently being redone on the new form and must be submitted by February. USA has $6825.00 in the carry over grant and would like to use it for audio, flash drives, food and materials for the Policy Summit to be held in March. The board decided it would be advantageous to have the Town Hall Meetings prior to the Policy Summit, so we could provide community input to the invitees as well as data. We will be inviting Legislators, Secretaries and Superintendents of Schools.

Town Hall Meetings-We will have about 9 sites for the Town Hall Meetings-7 of them in New Castle County, 1 in Dover and 1 in Seaford. We will also open it up to colleges to see if they would be interested in holding them as well.

We need to start meeting with the committees who plan to hold the THM, which should take place at the end of March or early April. The Feds are asking for March 22nd to be the date for all of the meetings, but that may not be possible due to Spring Breaks.

We need to find out when the Spring Breaks are for various schools. We know some of them:

· Appoquinimink, Christina, Red Clay 7 Brandywine Districts are all April 2-9

· Tower Hill, Sanford, Friends & Tatnall Last 2 weeks in March

· Salesianum End of March

· University of Delaware March 27-April 4th

· Caravel Academy April 2-11

Yvonne Bunch from OPEI said that they would support Delaware Town Hall Meetings. Isabel Rivera-Green said that DSAMH would also help out.

We have until January 29th to give the names of definite commitments for the Town Hall Meetings.

LTC. Greg Snapp said that the National Guard would be able to help at the meetings with the audio/visual part. They can bring Proximas to use there.

Physicians Initiative-Linda Brasel is planning to have this next summer on a Saturday. USA will help to support this, but we will need to make it smaller, hold it at Arcadia University and not hire a national speaker. The budget needs to be less than the original $20,000.

College Meeting-The Center for Drug and Alcohol Studies will contact the various Delaware Colleges to see if they want to participate in a survey on alcohol and other drug use already being done at UD. It will provide more information than is currently available for that age group, and the SPF-SIG is very interested in gathering the information.

Parent-to-Parent Trainings-Since Mary's move, USA now has less storage space, so old sets of Parent to Parent video tapes were offered to schools, and nine schools accepted them. Lou Colombo from the Passage Group would like to come up to Delaware the last week in February to do a facilitator training. The cost for him for 2 days is $2000. If two programs are purchased, he will reduce his rate considerably. Roberta thought maybe we would do a facilitator training during the day, speak to the parents at night and then speak to the school administrators the next morning.

Data Trends- Roberta met with the Center for Disability Studies to discuss students with disabilities. Questions about disabilities have been added to the school surveys, done in Delaware public schools. It appears that students with disabilities may have higher rates of alcohol and other drug use.

This year the survey administrators will be distributing Resource Cards with emergency numbers on them to all students taking the surveys in middle school and high school. They will also be handed out at health fairs and other events. She had 30,000 printed for $600.00. Members who would like some should contact Roberta at basha@udel.edu.

Coalition Infrastructure-By Laws were handed out to everyone in attendance. The comments were:

· Article II Purpose-YES this is correct for USA

· Article III, Section 1-YES members may be organizations or individuals

· Article III, Section 3-Is a 2 year membership acceptable-YES

· Article III, Section 4-Membership renewal will be reassessed every 2 years after the initial 2-year membership.

· Article III, Section 4-Board feels that the member satisfaction survey should be completed every year.

Chairperson-USA needs to prepare a printed job description for the role of chairperson. This role could be elected or could rotate among members of the coalition. It would help to give members more of a stake in the meetings and also give better exposure of the coalition to the networks of each of the members. The Chair would need good staff support, which would be provided through the current staff. It was generally decided that the Chair should serve a two year term and be replaced by the Vice-Chair who could also serve in the Chair’s absence.

The Chair will be responsible for abiding by the By-Laws. The Chair will need to convene and run the meetings, develop the agenda and have support of the USA Staff.

Please send suggestions for job descriptions and other additions/changes to the by-laws to Roberta so they can be ready for a vote by the next meeting on February 17th and put in place by the March 10th meeting.

The next USA Executive Board meeting is: FEBRUARY 17TH AT 3:30 AT ARCADIA UNIVERSITY, 2ND FLOOR.