Post date: Aug 17, 2014 4:36:27 AM
I just returned from the "Summer" KASP board meeting. I say "summer" because it's hard for me conceptualize summer as ongoing while teachers and students are already engaged in their fall semester. In one of my school districts, students have already began attendance. In the other district, they start on Monday (I'm writing this on a Saturday evening.) Regardless of my challenge to accept the vernacular, our "summer" board meeting is finished, and I have some information to share with you.
Our annual KASP fall conference will be held on October 16th and 17th, 2014 in Lawrence, KS. Much more information will be shared on KASP's conference information page. Registration for the conference is available online.
The Board voted to change language in our governing documents which defines the membership year as 365 calendar days. We have been operating under a calendar year membership type (Jan 1 to Dec 31). The decision to make the change is largely due to need to simplify membership options with our ongoing website updates.
As part of this change to our membership year, once a KASP member has paid, they will have online access to secured areas of the KASP website for the remainder of their membership term.
Making this change also allows our website to conduct the membership management automatically, rather than requiring Board members to manually update membership rosters.
You may have caught reference to "secured areas" in the above item. One of The Board's long-term goals has been to enable online professional development content through our website. Currently, all pages on the site are open to everyone, with the small exception that you must be logged into the site in order to make payments (both for membership and conference registration.) Even then, you would not have to be a paid member, you just need to create an account with KASP. In the future, we hope to allow different membership levels (free, general member, premium member, etc) in order to provide online trainings through the website.
Kansas Senate Bill 367 has caused a great deal of concern for some school districts in Kansas. Briefly explained, the bill restricts the way that student data is shared with third parties. While that generally sounds like a good idea, the problem exists when data is collected and stored from testing companies without parental permission. For many school psychologists, a large amount of data is housed offsite (AIMSweb, IEP documentation, Q-Interactive, etc.) which certainly raises red-flags and caution signs as our work continues to move to more digital assessment formats and scoring systems.
I also shared information with the Board about our upcoming SEK Regional Meeting. Several Board members expressed their excitement about our meeting and verified my suspicion that this will be our first-ever such attempt. I'm pleased to work with school psychologists in southeast Kansas who value the opportunity to meet and share ideas and concerns about our profession. Registration for our regional meeting isn't yet available. Stay tuned!