We also discussed asking Alan Parks and/or Bonnie Blagojevic to post the brochure to the MDEC website

Treasury Report and Fundraising

Deb Rainey gave the treasury report. MDEC has approximately $400 in the bank.

Further fundraising activities were discussed. Karen McClure-Richard suggested putting a picture of the MDEC t-shirts on the website.

Updates

Members gave updates on events and activities:

• Pat Clark discussed a new on-line class that she will offer at UMA. The class will focus on developmental disabilities including autism, ADHD, and learning disabilities. This will be a 100-level class and it will be offered during the Spring 2006 semester. The current exceptionalities course will also continue to be offered.
• Jill Downs discussed the Maine Children’s Congress to be held 9/27-9/28 at Sunday River. 175 people have signed up and community teams are being encouraged to participate.

Professional Development

A number of different topics were discussed including the feasibility of a conference for this spring, future possibilities for putting on a conference including possible partners, doing a needs survey in order to determine training interests of members, speakers for future meetings, and student presentations.

• It was decided that a conference is not feasible at this time given the current commitments of members.
• There was discussion about sending a letter to potential collaborators to see if there is interest in sponsoring a future conference. A list of potential collaborators was generated:
  • MAEYC
  • Maine Roads to Quality
  • CDS
  • Public School Pre-K programs
  • Maine Child Care Licensing
  • Office of Head Start and Child Care
  • LDA
  • RDC’s
  • Maine Parent Federation
  • Maine Autism Society
  • Maine Association for Infant Mental Health
• Sue Chevalier suggested finding out what the training interests are of the DEC membership. We discussed sending the letter to the listserv and/or posting it to the website. Martie Kendrick said she would prepare a survey. A list of topics was generated for the survey.
• Jill Downs suggested that we find out about how other DEC state subdivisions handle professional development and also explore possibilities for collaborating with other subdivisions within New England to do a regional conference.
• Possibilities for speakers for meetings were discussed. One potential speaker who was mentioned is Terry Bellas who has expertise in DIR/Floor Time.

MDEC Committees

Sue Chevalier brought up the topic of committees and whether we should recruit members for committees. According to the MDEC constitution committees include the Executive Committee (consists of the president, president elect, immediate past president, secretary, treasurer, the subdivision representative to the federation's governing board, and chairs of standing committees) and four standing committees (membership, publications, advocacy, and professional development). Ad hoc committees may also be established. It was decided that we will see how many members attend the next night meeting and that interest in committee membership would be discussed at that time.

Agenda for 2/14/05 Meeting

• Report on sessions attended at National DEC conference in Portland OR
• Updates: CDS situation, Children’s Congress, Others
• Student presentations
• Results of needs assessment
• Planning for professional development
• Committee membership

The need to revisit the PATH that was previously done at a future meeting was discussed.

The meeting was adjourned at 1 PM.

Submitted by: Sandy Doctoroff