[CALIBK12] CSLA membership suspension

[Barbara Jeffus]

To Janet and CALIBK12 members:



To follow up on John McGinnis's message to CALIBK12, I, too, would like to respond to a few of your statements.



"The board had been told all along that we would have a menu of services to choose from but when the time came for a decision, we were presented with an all-or-nothing slate."



The Leadership Development Committee, which I chaired, was charged with the responsibility to present options for association management to the CSLA Executive Board. Among the options considered were having a full-time or part-time executive director; a full-time or part-time office secretary (and various combinations of those options); contracting with another association such as the California Library Association to manage CSLA; or contracting with an association management company (AMC). The Board directed the committee to move forward with the AMC option.



We believed that if we chose an AMC, we could present the Board with a "cafeteria" type of menu of services. To that end the committee crafted a Request for Proposal (RFP) in which CSLA's numerous business functions were broken out, e.g. office management, membership recruitment and retention, web site administration, financial accounting, bill payments, conference site selection, exhibitor coordination, advertising sales, etc. We invited everyone who had a hand in any aspect of CSLA business functions to contribute to this RFP. This included Carol and Bob.



Not one of the four companies that responded to our RFP broke out these costs individually. They each gave us a flat fee for all services. What we learned was that association management companies would be willing to contract to run our conferences without being our executive director. However, they were not willing to assume the executive director role with responsibility for the overall financial welfare of the association while someone else had control of the conference's business functions, which represent approximately 50% of the association's income. So the Executive Board did have to choose between contracting with an association management firm or continuing association operations as we had in the past. That was the choice.



"Through out the research process both the board and Carol were told that her position was secure."



Your use of the passive voice ("the board and Carol were told") leaves the question hanging, "By whom?" As chair of the committee charged with bringing recommendations for association operations to the Board, I never told the Board anyone's position was secure. John McGinnis, the Vice President to whom my committee reported, told the Board at two separate meetings in January and March that every business function of the association was "on the table." That included Bob's roles as web administrator and conference registration coordinator; John's own role as database coordinator for membership, elections, motions and Legiday; Dual Graphics's role as printer for our journals and conference programs for over 20 years (whose representative became a friend of John's); Colorprint Reprographics who produced our monthly newsletter for more than a decade (with whom John had a close working relationship); and all office and conference business functions. The RFP process was to determine whether the association could save money and perform this work more professionally by contracting with an association management firm rather than doing these functions as we always had.



>From time to time individual Board members, such as you, did express a desire to preserve Carol's job. But such personal expressions did not represent Board action or Board direction. My committee was charged by unanimous vote of the Executive Board in November 2007, to present recommendations for the business management of CSLA. The Committee was given a broad berth with no restrictions in order to insure that we proposed the best possible recommendation. We were not emotionally indifferent to the impact of our recommendation on several individuals. However, our professional responsibility was to present a recommendation that was, in our judgment, in the best interest of the California School Library Association.



"The fact that she [Carol] was told on Friday night before the board had even voted that her position was to be out-sourced greatly disturbed me."



The night before the Executive Board meeting in May, after a day of visiting association management firms, the committee reached the decision to recommend that CSLA contract with the Association Resource Center. We also advised Sandra Yoon as president to inform Carol and Bob of our recommendation that night. This was a courtesy. We didn't want to blind-side Carol and Bob during the Board meeting the next day. We also wanted to give Carol and Bob time to think about our recommendation so they could better participate in the discussion that would precede the Board's vote. Carol decided not to attend the Board meeting so she did not participate in the discussion of the pros and cons of our recommendation. Following the vote, the Board decided to ask Carol to continue her work with the 2008 conference committee, which was midway through the planning year, even though ARC would assume all other responsibilities for the year. Carol declined CSLA's request. CSLA leadership worked with ARC during contract negotiations to request that ARC hire Carol as CSLA's conference coordinator. Carol declined the ARC offer. We respect Carol's decision not to accept either the CSLA or ARC offers. Under the circumstances, however, I feel CSLA leadership should not be accused of "callous treatment."



"Carolyn at ARC did a fine job assuming command as conference coordinator but she certainly did not have the experience or background that Carol does."



Carolyn Tienken's work as the CSLA conference coordinator was indeed outstanding. She has, in fact, long and diverse experience as a conference coordinator for other associations, which explains why she successfully assumed our conference responsibilities midway through the planning year.



I want you, Janet, and all CSLA members to understand the amount of time, thoughtful discussion, attention to detail, careful deliberation, and openness applied to this very important process. Our association will be stronger because of the Board's decision. Picture the Verizon commercials with the phalanx of support people behind every caller. That's what our new executive director and the team at ARC offer every member of the California School Library Association.


Barbara Jeffus
School Library Consultant
California Department of Education
1430 N Street, Suite 3207
Sacramento, CA 95814
916.319.0445
FAX 916.319.0172
http://www.cde.ca.gov/ci/cr/lb

READ Green. Borrow a Library Book!

From: calibk12-bounces at lists.sjsu.edu [mailto:calibk12-bounces at lists.sjsu.edu] On Behalf Of John McGinnis
Sent: Monday, December 29, 2008 4:15 PM
To: calibk12 at lists.sjsu.edu
Subject: Re: [CALIBK12] CSLA membership suspension

To: Janet Melikian
I'm writing to address your decision to suspend your CSLA membership and to respond to your assertion that CSLA Executive Board members behaved callously.
YOUR MEMBERSHIP
In your message to CSLA members you said:
"The callous treatment of this amazing lady and fine man [Carol Shuey and Bob Skapura] astounds me.  If this is how CSLA treats individuals who have provided excellent, long term service, what does that say about the organization?"
The answer is simple - it says nothing. The treatment you call callous, if it were true, might say something about the eleven CSLA officers, myself included, who supported the decision to contract with the Association Resource Center (ARC) to provide management services for CSLA. But it says nothing about the other 1,500 members - professional and paraprofessional, retired and student, honorary and friend, commercial and sustaining - who volunteer on committees and boards to support the mission of CSLA, "To provide leadership to ensure that all California educators and students are effective users of ideas and information."
When you sever your ties from the community of your colleagues by refusing to pay your dues, you hurt not only the eleven members with whom you disagree, you hurt the other 1,500 members as well. Worse, you hurt the "educators and students" CSLA is committed to serve. Worst of all, you do it in a budget year when CSLA needs every member it can recruit to help preserve our colleagues' jobs, our school libraries, and, therefore, our students' access to ideas and information as provided uniquely in school libraries. There are better ways to express both your admiration of Carol and Bob as well as your disagreement with CSLA officers. But that requires you to remain a member of the California School Library Association.
THE EXECUTIVE BOARD DECISION
The people you accused of the "callous treatment" of Carol and Bob are eleven CSLA Executive Board members who supported the recommendation to contract with ARC, and the Leadership Development Committee whose chair brought the recommendation to the Board.  They are:
Sandra Yoon, President
Connie Williams, President-Elect
Martha Rowland, Past President
Nina Jackson, Secretary
Peter Doering, Vice President, Communications
John McGinnis, Vice President Governmental Relations
Judith Martin, Vice President, Professional Development
Mary Ann Harlan, Northern Section President
Diane Alexander, Northern Section Past President
Jim Duke, Southern Section President
Pam Oehlman, Southern Section President-Elect
Barbara Jeffus, Chair, Leadership Development Committee
These are not people given to the "callous treatment" of their friends and colleagues. Several of these officers worked more closely and for more years with Carol and Bob than you have. For some of them, this decision was difficult, and in a few cases painful. They reached their decision because, in their minds and hearts, this action was in the best interest of our association, its members, and the "educators and students" CSLA serves. They made their decision after thoughtful deliberation based on research conducted over a period of several months. You have every right to disagree with them. You have no right to impugn their character so unjustifiably and publicly.
Barbara Jeffus, as chair of the committee that made the recommendation to the Board, will post a message soon to CALIBK12 in which she describes the selection process in more detail.
John McGinnis
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.sjsu.edu/pipermail/calibk12/attachments/20081229/42b4e9bb/attachment.html