The holidays are over and I hope you are rested.   With all of the hubbub surrounding the myriad of family celebrations I’m sure you had hardly enough time to put up your feet and contemplate what you wish to accomplish during the remainder of the 07-08 school year.
         
Quite frankly we have had little time to contemplate here at MEMSPA with so many aspects of our organization in various stages of development.
         
We had a very successful conference in Traverse City this year. We generated a reasonable profit through sponsors and vendors, which will help, offset the money lost due to our decline in membership. We are 40 members down from financial projected membership and 90 down from last year’s actual membership. We are all still working on it, along with Susan Townsend and her team assembled from our regions. Don’t forget you have a responsibility here as well. Person to person is the most effective way to recruit new members.  Bar none!
         
We are putting the finishing touches on the Winter Leadership Institute for January 30 through February 1, 2008. (New & Aspiring Principals – January 30 & 31, and Established & Striving Principals – January 31 & February 1)  If you haven’t registered yet please see the program and register by clicking on this link. http://memspa.org/pages/events.cfm  It’s not too late.

Legislative Advocacy Day is February 7, 2008 at the Radisson in Lansing. This is done in collaboration with the Michigan PTA and the Michigan Association of Secondary School Principals. See the program by going to this website. http://michiganptsa.org/eventreg/advocacyDay.html Bring a team of principals and parents to this event to collaborate on securing an educational future for our children.

Our conference planning committee is meeting this week to begin the journey of preparing for our 2008 MEMSPA Annual Conference at the Kalamazoo Radisson, December 1-3, 2008. It’s a little early to announce some of the exciting enhancements planned for our annual conference, however it is enough to say that it will be a “can’t miss” event.

Today you received a short survey to assist our executive committee with direction on the best way to assist the unique needs of our Urban and Rural principals. MEMSPA is here to support every principal in this state. We want to be certain that we “hit the mark” on this one, and with your input I’m sure it will be done.

Expect another survey soon as we need to know if we can run two Summer Leadership Institutes with one geographically closer to the bridge. This would allow our Upper Peninsula members, who display great leadership in our organization, an opportunity to join us in learning without traveling so far. Our surveys will tell us what is feasible so we can provide the best possible and most needed training to our members. We are fairly certain that we will hold at least one during the first part of August.

If you haven’t visited our website in a while please do so at www.memspa.org - no password is required. Be certain to notice the Lifetouch logo on each page as our major website sponsor. We so appreciate their partnership with our association.

Bob

Robert Howe, Jr.
Executive Director
517.694.8955
bob@memspa.org