Dear OSPA Members,

On Friday, August 1, your elected and appointed OSPA Executive Board members met for the annual Planning Conference and first Executive Board meeting for the 2014-15 year at the Central Ohio ESC between 10am and 3pm.

As you can see below, running an Association takes considerable planning, time commitment, and brings many challenges as we try to support each of you through your statewide premier professional association. I am enthusiastic and optimistic regarding our Planning Conference efforts from this past Friday. From this essential meeting, I think we handled a number of important activities on behalf of the Association and its members, started to handle the difficult work of linking our committee, liaison, and regional work to the larger Association strategic plan, as well as established several important norms of behavior excepted from OSPA Board members.

A few of the highlights from the Planning Conference:

1. The 2014-15 OSPA Budget was approved with recognition that our financial situation has modestly improved through conscientious and judicious budget planning in the past year. While we have had some success through increased conference revenue and containment of OSPA central office expenditures, there is still more ground to cover. The Financial Advisory Committee (FAC) will continue to look at increasing revenue while curtailing costs in the coming year. During the lunchtime FAC meeting, we discussed formation of a special taskforce on revenue generation beyond our membership, MCE and conference registrations to explore new ways to market ourselves and gain all-important funds to support the Association. Never the less, we are in a stronger financial position today than we were a year ago.

2. We reviewed results from the Operational Excellence workgroup and our recent Board perception survey, completed in summer 2014. Across nearly all dimensions, responses revealed that Board members are generally satisfied with the performance of the Board, OSPA staff, and communication amongst its entities with only 1-3 Board members acknowledging some level of concern. In addition, Board members reported that they feel heard and comfortable addressing issues impacting our Association. We hopeful to continue this survey in coming years to monitor the emotional and performance health of our Board efforts.

3. Through the gracious work of former OSPA president and scholarship committee chair, Mrs. Wolcott Mendelson, our Board established 4 norms of behavior that should help us in the coming year handle the important work of being a Board member. Valorie will be emailing the Board in a bit to remind us of these 4 concepts as a framework for our subsequent meetings.

4. The Board unanimously voted to confer the OSPA School Psychologist of the Year and Early Career awards to deserving recipients. Let's look forward to coming conference when we officially recognize these members on behalf of the Association and their passionate work in school psychology!

5. The Dyslexia Taskforce has been officially "upgraded" to an Ad Hoc committee, which allows another two years of ongoing work in this domain. Our appreciation to former OSPA president and Dyslexia Ad Hoc Committee Chair, Mrs. Denise Eslinger, for her willingness to chair this ad hoc committee.

6. The OSPA Board unanimously adopted the formation of a Personnel Taskforce for the purposes of developing language and procedures for the equitable, ongoing, and consistent evaluation for our OSPA staff. My appreciation for Dr. Teitelbaum, Dr. Reike, and Mr. Archer, along with members of the "presidential trio" (Drs. Noltemeyer and Shelby) for their willingness to serve. My intent will be to have this language ready for adoption by next May's Executive Board meeting.

7. The Board unanimously adopted the continuation of The Ohio School Psychologist (TOSP) publication on a 3 issue cycle in the coming year.. This allows our nationally-recognized journal to continue to provide leading peer reviewed original academic research and Association updates while also remaining financially prudent given the large expense to the Association for publication costs.

8. The committees, liaisons and regional groups met in small ground activities to align their work with the strategic plans of the Association for the coming year. Specific attention was provided towards the Conference Committees, in recognition of their salience in our Association, and supporting them in content, speakers, logistics and development of a multi-year plan for our conferences. We continue to need interested Board and Association members to support our current chairs, including the need to find a spring conference co-chair and an eventual fall conference co-chair after Dr. Michael Forcade's initial 1-2 year commitment has concluded.

Thanks to Mr. Chris Sweeney, Treasurer-Elect, for some great 'action shots" of the Board meeting. I've attached a few to this email for our members to see your elected and appointed Board members at work. Look forward to seeing an article in this fall's TOSP concerning the Planning Conference efforts.

! What a busy day, yet despite this amount of work, I felt like our 5 hour meeting flew by. I also left feeling far more energized and excited for our coming year. As your elected president, I am in service to all of you and please do not hesitate to contact me if I can offer any support to you in this forthcoming new year. Until then, please accept my best wishes for a productive and great start to 2014-15!

In service to you,
Erich