The spring meeting of the SDCTE Executive Board was held following the SDCTE Conference in Chamberlain Saturday, March 23, with President Nancy Kampfe calling the meeting to order.  Other board members in attendance included Deana Brodkorb, Karen Harrington, Sharon Olbertson, and Dodie Bemis.

The minutes were approved as read, and the treasury had a balance of $1036,86 with 65 paid memberships.

Discussion focused on the spring conference evaluation.  The introduction of the round table discussion topics proved to be very popular, and the participants enjoyed having a noon luncheon with a speaker.  For next year, the board plans to move the business meeting from the evening banquet to following the luncheon speaker.  We will retain the Idea Exchange with plans to keep it special by awarding unique door prizes and not allowing the remaining participants to have access to the handouts.  Another suggestion was to perhaps start the Saturday morning sessions with a roundtable discussion as well, as it seems to take a while for the participants to gather.  Kathleen Taylor from Redfield was suggested as a possible banquet speaker for next year since there was no award for author of the year this year.  Karen will take the initiative to contact her.

Two other items to remember for next year include at least 10% of the group does not attend the banquet and a good third of the group does not stay for Saturday morning.  Dodie suggested the news release not be given out until the banquet in order for the Teacher of the Year to be included in the release.  Nancy will compile the conference evaluation forms and send them out to the board members.  Dodie is to send thank you notes to this year's presenters and Nancy will take care of sending thank you's to the vendors.

Everything is to be submitted to Deana by April 10th.  Dodie will send the newsletter out to all paid members and non-member conference attendees in hopes that they will join.

Karen now has access to the Administrative Memo and plans to put an article regarding the Spring Conference synopsis in the next memo.  Hopefully, it will trigger some interest among the administrators into allowing staff members to attend next spring's conference.

Four people volunteered to do a session for SDEA in October.  They include Al Boysen, Sharon Olbertson, Marion Reed (using Dodie's membership), and Nancy Kampfe (SD Young Writers Contest).  That leaves two sessions that we still need to secure.  Cut off date is May 15th.  Dodie is in charge of finding presenters if volunteers don¹t come forward.

The board voted to send Nancy and Deana to the regional affiliate meeting in August.  NCTE will share in the expenses of the trip.

Nancy then asked for nominations for NCTE Young Teacher.  Megan Fischer from Parker and Jennifer Mueller from Rapid City Central were suggested.  Megan is in her third year at Parker and Dodie is to find out about Jennifer.  Both would be excellent candidates, so we¹ll use the more experienced first and then go with the second as a possible nominee for next year.

Dodie suggested that the SDCTE flyer be updated to include a form for membership and the date and location of the spring conference. Nancy will have a mock up ready for board review by the fall meeting.

In hopes of obtaining more (some) nominees for SD Author of the Year and English Teacher of the year, Dodie is to include those forms in the fall membership renewal mailing.

The next meeting will be held Saturday, September 7th, at 11:30 at the Twin Dragon in Mitchell.