Welcome back to school NEW Northeast District Members! I hope you are refreshed and looking forward to the great second half of the year with your students. I am excited to launch our NEW Northeast KMEA District on March 1, 2018! Thank you to all the members of the District Split Committee for their hard work and dedication seeing this process through from start to finish. It has been a monumental task, and I know we all appreciate everything that the committee did to make sure the process was fair, detailed and complete.
Your NEKMEA Board has been hard at work planning and organizing for the official start of our new district. You can find a listing of the Northeast Board members on the KMEA website. I encourage you to check that website often. This website is where information about our district and our events will be published.
Congratulations to our new President-elect Damian Johnson! Damian is the band director at the Eudora schools and will be a great advocate for you and your programs at the state level. Since Damian was elected to this leadership position, I have replaced him as the 1-4A Band Chair with Katie Grose. Katie is the band director for the Jefferson County West school district. I welcome both of them to the Board and know they will be excellent additions to our district leadership.
The By-Laws for our new district were adopted by the membership and will become effective when the District officially opens on March 1st. These By-Laws are published on the KMEA website and are available for all to read. Soon, the Board hopes to have the District’s Policy Handbook published and available on the KMEA website. Our goal is to have them posted by the end of January.
The dates and locations of district events are not currently posted on the website, but they will be on March 1st. The deadlines, fees and late fees for all entries will also be posted on March 1st. Below are the dates and locations of the district’s events for both 2018-2019 and 2019-2020:
- Dinner Meeting: Monday 9/10/18 and Monday 9/9/19 Holton High School-Jayme Malsom, site coordinator
- District Auditions: Saturday 11/10/18 and Saturday 11/9/19Eudora High School-Damian Johnson, site coordinator
- District Mini-Convention: Saturday 12/1/18 and Saturday 12/7/19
- Topeka High School-Vocal site, Jennifer Antonetti
- Seaman High School-Band site, Cary Stahly
- Washburn Rural High School-Orchestra site, David Ohse
In addition to finalizing the Policy Handbook, we are going to have elections for the assistant chairpersons to the Board. These people will serve a two-year term helping the current chair from March 1, 2018 through February 29, 2020. Then they will become a voting Board member and be the Chairperson from March 1, 2020 through February 28, 2022. If you or someone you know would be interested in being nominated for one of these positions, please contact me or a current Board member.
This is an exciting time to be a member of KMEA, especially in our district. As with any organization, our strength lies in our membership. If you are a member, I encourage you to stay involved. If you know a teacher who not a member, invite them to become a member. If you have suggestions for improvement, let a Board member know.
Best of luck this semester and I look forward to seeing you all at the KMEA-In Service Workshop this February.
