The meeting was called to order by President Mike Teahon. Those in attendance included Mike Williams, John Stritt, and Caroline Winchester at ESU 10 - Kearney, Craig Peterson at ESU 11 (BNI system), and Jeff Anderson and Phyllis Brunken at Fullerton (polycom).

I. Approval of minutes of September 18 meeting.
Phyllis Brunken moved that the September 18 minutes be approved as presented. Caroline Winchester second. Motion approved.

II. 2003-04 Budget
Caroline Winchester moved that the budget and bills be approved as presented. Craig Peterson second.
Discussion:

• Phyllis Brunken inquired about the duties of the support staff - .25 salary.
  • John Stritt said that Sue Rains provides support as requested. Craig Peterson inquired if she does erate for ESU 10 as part of this salary. John S said that she is a great support in erate. In addition to working with ESU 10 schools in helping them prepare the 470 and 471 forms, she will handle questions related to erate approval and erate applications for the consortium.
• In reviewing the budget, John S. shared the ongoing concern that the yearly expenses exceed income. Discussion on this topic:
  • Past reviews indicated that cash reserve might continue to support the consortium needs without raising dues for the next 3 or 4 years. John S. will provide an update of this projection at the next meeting.
  • Raise dues is a possibility but we need to share that with the governing board.
  • Additional members would provide more dues. Lexington and Grand Island are both considering being active TVDEC members for 2004-05.
  • Increased services for schools for additional polycoms could be charged to those districts and result in an additional income source.
• Mike Teahon asked for an explanation of the $20,866 contingency fund. Caroline Winchester stated that these were funds contributed by TVDEC north schools prior to joining with ESU 10 in the grant writing proposal.

Motion Approved.

III. Old Business
Phyllis Brunken shared about Twin River distance education system. The $27,000 that is available from the 1999 Excellence In Education grant could serve as the upfront money to connect Twin River to the Crossroads pod. Phyllis and John are working with Roger Hahn and Frontier, Citizens, and Qwest to finalize this proposal. Phyllis has a concern regarding tech support as the technology within Twin River was purchased from Cytek and would be different from all other Crossroad schools. John will work with Phyllis in filing the 470 form for Twin River.

IV. New Business
Phyllis Brunken announced that she would be retiring in June. Norm Ronell, ESU 7 administrator, requested Phyllis to ask the TVDEC executive council if they would share John Stritt's services with Crossroads. Currently there are 11 schools, ESU 7, and Central Community College as members in Crossroads. Phyllis shared that she is training personnel at ESU 7 to carry on some of her duties. Questions of Phyllis included:

• Mike Teahon - Is there a job description for the Crossroad position? Yes that can be provided.
• What are the consortium dues for Crossroads? $2,000 per site.
• Would Crossroads consider joining Tri-Valley? That is a consideration
• Comment: By adding Crossroads schools, it could add some financial support to TVDEC.
• John Stritt shared that the TVDEC consortium would have to determine priorities of the TVDEC director and that would help determine whether there was enough time to support both consortiums. John supported further discussion on such a proposal.
• John S. will continue discussion with Phyllis and Norm Ronell and report at the January meeting.

DFS Proposal - John Stritt presented a copy of the DFS proposal for equipment and maintenance services. This proposal could shift all maintenance support from John Stritt to DFS. Some considerations shared by John Stritt included:

• Need to establish a per incident plan as DFS will probably handle some of these problems that are outside of their responsibility. If these occur, the repair cost would be paid by the school.
• SNDLC has a $750 yearly maintenance fund that takes care of all maintenance, upgrades, equipment repair, new equipment purchases. Estimated that the yearly costs for DFS and repair are in the $6,000 to $10,000 area.

  Discussion:

• The contract dates don't go along with the TVDEC calendar year. Could the contract go from July 1 through June 30?
• Phyllis shared that this would be a plus having an outside source take care of troubleshooting
  • as it is difficult to stay up on technology and if someone new were to take the position, could they support this.
  • is this the best use of the director's time.
• Craig Peterson said in planning TVDEC, two positions were considered, one program director and the second technical support. This would support having a tech support position.
• Phyllis reminded that this contract is just for TVDEC south and that consideration for north maintenance and equipment might be different.
• Mike Teahon shared that the current per incident rate needs to remain through the rest of the year and that schools must be informed of the change and gain approval which would increase means to pay for this ongoing maintenance agreement.
• John Stritt will get more information from DFS regarding proposed contract and services provided.
  • Note - John Stritt met with DFS on Friday November 14. The following questions were answered:
    • DFS would be willing to change the startup date of the contract to match the ESU calendar.
    • DFS would be discussing an interim rate. They will share that with me as some services will fall under this rate.
    • There will be no travel or hourly rate charged for 90 days following signing off of the project. That will probably be around December 1.
    • DFS has not charged for services that are done through remote administration. These include logging into the CPUs to determine where the problems might be.
    • DFS realizes that any change in the per incident to a contract rate must be approved by a vote of the member schools.

Open Meeting Law - Phyllis B shared that she thought any TVDEC meeting is subject to the state Opening Meeting Announcement Law. Mike Teahon will look in and report back at the next meeting.

Left Over Equipment - As a result of the upgrade, there are pieces of equipment that are no longer being used. John S said that Cytek is willing to work with TVDEC for some of the QLink pieces and that the audio mixer could best be sold over EBay. Phyllis suggested that a note be sent to all schools in the consortium listing the pieces of equipment in question and requesting that each board should designate these pieces as surplus items. Upon approval from the schools, John Stritt would collect these items and sell the items with funds being placed in the maintenance fund. John Stritt will contact schools on disposal of equipment.

V. Annual meeting followup
Bylaw Updates from all schools are still coming in. John Stritt hopes to have full approval from all schools in order to update the Interlocal Agreement.

Distance Education Compensation Proposal - As guidelines were adopted at the annual meeting for providing compensation for schools sending distance education classes, John S recommended to the board that further study and further definition of school plus teacher compensation be prepared prior to the 2004-05 school year. Reasons for further discussion:

• Several schools have already begun paying/receiving for these services.
• Any funds that are received, currently are subject to state aid reduction.
  • Funding could be through the Consortium with positive balances reducing annual consortium dues.
• Increases chances of having more classes taught over the system
• Consider teacher compensation to be proactive regarding teacher payment
  • Insure some guidelines for teacher compensation - create some equality from district to district
  • Prefer to have this as part of each schools negotiated agreement. If the Consortium determined pay, the payment would still have to go through the school district.
• Continue discussion at January meeting.

VI. Director Update
NCLB Grant Application will be submitted by Friday, November 14.
Board approved letter of appreciation to SNDLC for support in upgrade.

VII. Next meeting - January 7, 2004

Meeting adjourned 2:46 PM

Submitted by John Stritt - TVDEC Director