The winter meeting of the SDCTE Executive Board was held in Mitchell, February 9th, with President Nancy Kampfe calling the meeting to order.  Other board members in attendance included Deana Brodkorb, Karen Harrington, Deb Knutson, and Dodie Bemis.  The minutes were approved as read, and the treasury had a balance of $1474.66 with 61 paid memberships.  The Board was very disappointed in the membership renewal process, as we only gained five out of the more than ninety people contacted.

Discussion focused on finalizing the plans for the Spring Conference.  There will be a conference packed similar to last year's.  Dodie is in charge of putting the packet together and Deana volunteered to bring pencils and bookmarks that can be added to the packet on site.

Nancy has been working with Cedar Shores in regard to arrangements.  Menus and breaks were decided upon.  Dodie volunteered to bring centerpieces from her Tech Prep storeroom with the agreement that they would be returned at the end of the conference.

Other items agreed upon include each Executive Board member is to bring at least one prize for the Idea Exchange.  Karen has tickets we can use for those who bring ideas, and Dodie will collect their exchange items at the registration table.  Dodie will bring the name tag holders and Nancy will produce the name tags.  Dodie is to have slips available at the registration table for door prize drawings.  Door prizes will include books given to us from NCTE for the conference. Dodie suggested we have a standardized news release that would be given to each participant.  The Board agreed.  Deana will be in charge of formatting the news release.

Deana has secured Carol Heart for the luncheon speaker.  The Board agreed to pay her a $50 stipend, mileage and meals.  Dottie Lebeaux will replace Margaret Coxwell's session at 1:40 on Friday. It will also be on brain research.

The three rotations of roundtable topics will run for 25 minutes, starting at 10:20 and ending at 11:45.  The facilitator for each table will also serve as the recorder.  A report out from each table will be published in the spring newsletter.  The topics and facilitators are as follows:

• Teaching in the Block Schedule, Karen
• Post Secondary Readiness, Sharon
• Balancing the Extra Curricular Load, Nancy
• Trouble Shooting in the First Five Years, Deana
• Dealing with DACS, Jan Martin
• 6+1 Writing Traits, Melanie Niehus

Nancy has also been busy contacting vendors and hopes to have at least six tables on hand.  This will hopefully satisfy those who suggested "more vendors with books to buy" in last year's conference evaluations.

In order to obtain more nominations for Teacher of the Year and Author of the Year, it was suggested that we secure those nominations during the banquet of the spring conference.  Karen will remain in charge of the selection process.  She will also contact Jim Swanson regarding the South Dakota Young Authors winners and invite them to the banquet as well.

Dodie suggested including a proposal form for the SDEA Conference in the packet since the deadline for proposals is usually the first week of May and we probably won't have another opportunity to contact possible presenters any later in the school year.  It's important for us to find six presenters who are also SDEA members, as that is the only money making project the organization has for the year.

Deana is to have the newsletter e-mailed to Dodie by mid February, and she will in turn send it to the SDCTE paid membership as well as the English Department Chairs of all the school districts in our database in hopes of bringing additional people to the Spring Conference.  Karen will see to it that the conference is mentioned in the Administrative Memo and Deb will forward the newsletter to all of the individuals she has on her English database.

The next meeting will be held following the wrap-up session Saturday morning, March 23rd.