Monday and Tuesday of last week I was at Barren River Lake Resort Park in Lucas, Kentucky, attending the Kentucky Society for Technology in Education spring retreat. This was my last face to face meeting as a member of the KySTE board prior to my departure from the board on July 1. For the last three years I have served first as vice-president, then as president, and for the last year I have served in the position of past president. But on July 1 I will be just another of KySTE’s 500 or so members.
As I look back at what has gotten done over the last three years, I feel a sense of pride and a sense of accomplishment. The organization has come a long way in those three years. A lot of what’s gotten done has been visible to members, but a lot of what’s gotten done has been behind the scenes as well. Here’s just a quick run down of what’s transpired in the three years from July, 2009 through today:
- KySTE Spring Conference. The KySTE conference was moved from the June/July time frame to the spring, and its location was moved from a seemingly random host school district to the Galt House in Louisville. I don’t think anyone in the organization could have imagined in his/her wildest dreams how successful the spring conference would be. A great deal of the credit for the success of the first conference–and thus the success of the next two–goes to Mayfield Independent Schools’ CIO Cheri Gossett, who took on the herculean task of organizing the first spring conference. She had to select a location, a date, a theme, sign contracts, select partners, solicit presentation proposals, and organize a major conference. All in just 9 months! She did it, and now the conference has had a successful three years, and it should be around for a very long time to come. Though I’m sure there will continue to be tweaks to the conference schedule, the overall idea of a three day conference with the first day for non-teaching positions seems fairly well established.
- KySTE Fall Event. The same can’t really be said for the Fall Event. I’ve been to five or six of these things, and none of them have been the same. That’s partially because we hadn’t hit upon a format that really worked. Last year, though, after moving the fall event from the Capital Plaza Hotel in Frankfort to the University of Louisville-Shelby Campus, KySTE found a format that seemed to work for everyone. Next year’s event should be fairly similar to this year’s very successful event, and hopefully another, smaller conference will be–like the KySTE Spring Conference–well established.
- Hiring of an Executive Director. A lot of the success of the two items above can be attributed to the fact that KySTE now has a paid employee–Gary Grant, who is the KySTE Executive Director. Gary provides the stability and continuity necessary to have consistency from year to year. KySTE could not be where it is today with the above items without Gary’s tireless efforts.
- Legal and Financial Review. I made this the focus of my year as President. To be frank, I did this mostly to protect my own rear end. While serving as vice-president, it occurred to me that–as a member of the KySTE board–I faced some legal and financial hazards. Specifically, if the board did something inappropriate, the KySTE board members themselves could be sued by KySTE members. Yet there was no one on the board with the legal and financial expertise to ensure that we were running the organization effectively. With this problem in mind, KySTE hired both an attorney and financial advisors to assist in strengthening KySTE’s bylaws (which had several loopholes written into them by non-lawyer Parliarmentarians) and to improve our financial standing. All of that culminated with the federal government’s acceptance a few weeks ago of KySTE’s 501(c)3 application. This means that KySTE is now a fully tax exempt non-profit (Like a lot of other things, our non-profit status prior had been only half completed by non-financial experts) that can accept tax-deductible donations. It also means that we have a mission to use the money that we accumulate through our conferences. Speaking of which…
- KySTE Outreach. The final major accomplishment of the last three years has been the establishment of an Outreach grant program for technology education in the state of Kentucky. The funding for this outreach has occurred thanks to money earned from the spring conference. This past year the KySTE board was very cautious about spending more than we could afford, so we only allocated a small amount for the outreach program: each KETS regional group had the opportunity to request up to $1,000 from KySTE for local technology training. Next year, though, plans are in the works for an outreach program that both increases the number of types of groups that can apply as well as increases the amount of money available for the applicants. Details will be worked out by a committee and available soon.
As I said, those are the things that I’ll walk away from my time as a KySTE board member and I’ll feel pretty good about having gotten them done. But the title of this post isn’t “KySTE’s Recent Past.” It’s “KySTE’s Future.” I began talking about all of the positives that have occurred during my tenure because–for the rest of this post–I want to focus on what DIDN’T get done during my tenure. I was as passionate about this topic as I was about any of the above, but in the end I failed to get anything done in regards to this topic, and I believe that failure had far-reaching consequences, not just for me, not just for my district, but for all members of KySTE and for the state as a whole…
I believe that the next important step for KySTE concerns advocacy of technology education, at the federal level–sure–but more importantly at the state level. As KySTE’s membership grows, and as KySTE’s reputation grows along with our conferences, KySTE will wield more and more political clout. And the potential will exist–in fact, it exists now–for KySTE to have an impact on state legislation. In addition to continuing all of the good ideas above, THAT should be the direction that KySTE should move towards in the future.
When I began my term as vice-president, I counted in my head the number of years until I would be off the board, and I saw that June of 2012 would be the time. I also counted the years since the KIDS staff (then OET) had succesfully managed to get $24 million for schools for new computers via the IDU project, and I knew that those computers would be due for replacement by the end of my tenure, and that the legislative session that occurred earlier this year would include an effort to renew the IDU funding. And I determined that one of the goals of my time on the KySTE board would be to organize KySTE membership in such a way that we could be a voice to encourage legislators to renew that funding. Of all of the items on my agenda as vice-president/president/past-president, it would have been the accomplishment I would have been proudest of, had it happened.
As president, Jeff Jones was in agreement that this was important, and it was broached as a possibility to membership early this school year. However, there was some pushback. Some members felt that–if KySTE became a political organization–school districts wouldn’t pay member’s dues anymore. I questioned whether paying membership dues was legal REGARDLESS of whether or not KySTE had a political bent, but there was little enthusiasm on the board to take on the issue, and so it was dropped.
I would love to say that I leave the board with no regrets. You know, be all Frank Sinatra like and say that I did it My Way, that I chewed up all my doubt and spit it back out. But that’s not the case. I do leave the board with a regret. I regret that I didn’t continue on, insist that whether or not boards of education got angry with us, we needed to be advocates for the IDU project and for KEN and for a whole host of other acronyms that most educators themselves don’t know anything about, so how can we expect voters and legislators to know anything about them UNLESS WE TELL THEM! But I didn’t.
Would it have made a difference anyway? I don’t really know. EVERY part of education has ended up getting cut this year (even SEEK, after we were initially told that at least it would be protected). It’s likely that even if every KySTE member had written a hand-written letter to his/her legislators, and even if every CIO had personally called them and met with them, that the final budget would still have been as poor as it is. But I guess we’ll never know.
Because the state budget is created only every other legislative session, it will be 2014 before the IDU project can be brought back to the table for discussion. My firm belief is that–between now and then–KySTE needs to do what is necessary to be ready to fight a battle. As I’ll talk about in an upcoming entry, we’re living in a time of HUGE transition in regards to technology. Never before have we had technology at hand that could radically change the way we teach in EVERY class. The idea of 1:1–whether it be traditional 1:1 or BYOD–is going to become a reality in the next five years. And students can make huge jumps in learning as a result PROVIDED schools are ready for the change.
We can do it, but we can’t do it without money. And I’m writing this to encourage the new KySTE board–NOW is the time for KySTE to get involved.