PES Executive Board Minutes, 2007

Thursday, March 15. Present members: Kerdeman, Laird, Katz, Sidorkin. Guests: Burbules, Joyce, Stengel, Milligan, Boyles.

Monday, March 19

1. Approval of minutes of 2006 Executive Board Meeting and 2006 Business Meeting

· Several typos corrected. Sasha is reprimanded for poor spelling skills.

· Debbie asked for an update on the relationship with AESA. Nick says that the pilot project continues: AESA members can subscribe to Ed. Theory. We work on closer collaboration with AESA. Blackwell is working with us on it.

· Deron: AESA used to have two journals, and it got rid of one of them. The experiment with Ed Theory is an attempt to replace the second journal.

· Debbie moved, Michael seconded; minutes approved with corrections.

2. New business: Yearbook Production Revision – Nick Burbules.

Nick explained the background of the proposal: The department of Educational Policy Studies, UIUC has been supporting much of overhead cost, and may not be able to do it anymore. The staffing situation has changed. The hard-cover publication is expensive, and the cost is going up. Also, we may want to use the advantages of the on-line universe.

Philosophy of Education Society Yearbook Proposal

Our proposal is to significantly change the current approach to PES Yearbook development and production. This publication has had a hybrid identity for the past 15 years or so — it is part straight proceedings of the PES annual conference, part refereed publication representing some of the best work in the field for the year. We suggest separating these two identities as follows:

Return to producing a true conference proceedings, including all conference presentations, developing this as an online-only publication.
Develop a new print publication that is an annual “best of” collection of the work presented at the conference.

An Online Conference Proceedings

Moving to an entirely online Proceedings would have a number of benefits:

It would allow for the publication of all conference sessions, including alternative sessions and other content currently not published due to space considerations – as well as video and other multimedia resources, if desired.
It would eliminate gray areas about what does or does not go into this publication.
It has the potential to reduce pressure on program chairs (both in terms of controlling what goes in this publication and of limiting the overall number of sessions at the conference in view of the book).
It has the potential to significantly decrease the project management, editing, and production requirements of the book. The online Proceedings would be treated as other such publications, with less post-conference editing and review and with most of the formatting for publication performed by the contributors.
It would eliminate printing and shipping costs for the Proceedings.
This is the medium through which many people already access conference papers. In view of this, the cost of producing a 400-500 page casebound book on archival paper becomes harder to justify.

There are also potential drawbacks:

Although this is changing, the perception that online-only publications are of lesser quality is still prevalent. And a Proceedings is less prestigious than a “Yearbook.”
Conference participants have come to expect that acceptance to the program is also assurance of a refereed print publication. This expectation will need to be addressed through a clear explanation of the overall benefits to the Society in making this change.
Because the Proceedings will be published directly within the OJS system, and because the online essays will not undergo the same editorial and production process currently in place, they may appear less “polished.”

An Annual “Best of” Collection (The Yearbook, as we currently call it)

Again, there are benefits and drawbacks. The benefits include the following:

A “best of” publication is likely to garner broader interest and perhaps gain wider circulation (both among individuals and university libraries—the current circulation of the Yearbook to libraries is under 200). A publication of this sort may be of interest to a publisher (in particular, Blackwell), and could possibly be “bundled” with subscriptions to Educational Theory as a “fifth issue.”
This publication would be shorter (approximately 24 essays, 200–250 pages) and more concentrated on the highest caliber work in the field. Responses and other non-refereed papers would not appear in the book. PES would have to make a decision about how to handle invited addresses. This would help reduce costs and focus more attention on the work that is published there.
The reduced length and reduced editorial and production responsibilities for the Proceedings would allow an increase in production values for this publication. Also, if other production options (such as going to paperback, developing a new design, etc.) were explored, it might be possible to decrease production costs while generating new revenue to support both this publication and the online Proceedings production.
For this publication, authors could be given the opportunity to revise their papers based on feedback from respondents and others. Currently, authors cannot revise to address substantive critiques, as doing so might render the response essays less meaningful. This feedback and opportunity for revision constitutes something like another round of review for this volume, and may help to further build the publication’s reputation in the evaluation of job candidates and tenure and promotion reviews.
The program chair would continue to serve as Editor of this volume, while the editorial responsibilities for the Proceedings would lessen considerably. This would allow for the chair to concentrate more on helping authors develop and improve their work. The value of the publication as an edited collection under the name of this Editor would be more clear.

Some drawbacks include:

Fewer conference participants would gain a print publication from the conference. All contributions would be published in the Proceedings, of course, but significantly fewer would be published in print form.
Responses would not be published in this book. One value of the Yearbook is as a record of the current debates in the field. The original papers and responses would continue to be available in the online Proceedings, but the back-and-forth format would not be a component of the print publication.

Some Closing Considerations

We raise this issue for discussion in part because we see a trend that cannot continue indefinitely: production costs are increasing, circulation is limited and seems to be very gradually dropping off, and the precarious circulation situation suggests that there are sharp limits to increasing the charge for the book in its current form. In part, this issue has become particularly apparent to us as changes in our staff and our procedures with Educational Theory have made managing certain tasks related to Yearbook production and distribution more challenging for us to absorb. Our goal is to explore with you ways we might minimize these problems while enhancing the visibility, accessibility, and prestige of the publications associated with the Society.

· Discussion ensued about use of responses in teaching. Nick informed that responses will be still available on-line.

· Michael: a procedural point. The dialogue should be extended to the members; we have discussed several options about the proposal, so we need a more extensive discussion.

· Susan: We should appoint a task force to work on the proposal, and bring it back the next year.

· Barb: I am not sure all papers we accept can legitimately be called the best in the field.

· Joyce: The staffing issues are not going away, and we came to a boiling point.

· Debbie: Wants to make sure the proposal helps to solve the staffing issues.

· Motion by Susan: The Executive Board generally supports the direction of Nick’s proposal; it asks the Business Meeting to hold the first hearing. Michael is asked to appoint a task force which will organize thorough consideration of the proposal, engage membership, and come back with a more specific proposal next year.

· Michael seconds. Motion passes unanimously.

3. President’s Report – Susan Laird

2006 PES Annual Meeting

President’s report

Susan Laird

This has been a full and exciting year thanks to the good humor, devoted and clever service of so many of you. Especially tremendous thanks are due to Deron Boyles for his generosity and grace through uncommonly difficult challenges as Hospitality Chair. This year the corporate hospitality industry has been recovering from severe losses to wars abroad and a record number of hurricanes here by unloading real estate, franchising their hotels, and then bearing down hard on their franchisees, who in the squeeze are desperately trying to meet their obligations by altering their protocols, complicating their contracts, and adding countless new fees. Unfortunately we did not discover until too late the severity of this situation or its particular acuteness for the Starwood group that owns Sheraton, whose debt load (if official reports online can be trusted) seems to be comparatively high within the industry as a whole. With government regulation of corporate activities severely reduced, small non-profit organizations like ours are especially vulnerable in this climate of crisis. As naïve volunteers, we acted from one mistaken understanding that has proved costly, as Sasha will later explain in more detail, not only in dollars but also in hours. My thanks to Deron, Sasha, and every single member of the Executive Board for collaborative and committed service in the heat of the moment and to all of you who as members have borne the rise in our conference registration fees that was necessary for the PES to weather this storm without taking our hotel to court.

Michael Katz in unlikely to toot his own horn, but as president-elect he has undertaken extensive self-education, travel, and investigation around this hotel business for the coming year, generous with his time and money to a degree we would be unreasonable to expect from most future presidents. We all owe him our thanks for these uncommon voluntary labors.

I want to suggest that after 2008, PES should consider meeting at university or other non-profit conference centers or else hire a professional conference coordinator who is savvy about the volatile financial context that frames hotels’ relations with their contractors. This unregulated context of volatility makes the quick obsolescence of hand-me-down manuals to hospitality chairs likely. For example, I recall that in 2005 we confronted labor disputes at our hotel that caused much quandary at the eleventh hour before the conference; these are symptomatic of the same underlying issues. After our difficulties this year, I have not only read financial and litigation reports posted on the Internet concerning various corporate hotels, I have also tracked down the several colleagues in my college who have been organizing conferences this year too. Not one of them failed to produce a grizzly “contract” story something like ours, and a couple of them offered stories much worse. One had to shop for a new conference hotel at the eleventh hour because the hotel was sold and thereby released from its contract with the organization. Meanwhile, however, online I have found that many universities in excellent locations have conference centers that we might consider as sites for our conferences after 2008. They will not necessarily be cheaper, and some may be operated by hospitality corporations, but I hope that universities might be less likely than the federal government just to look the other way at funny business. We would have moved from this hotel to Emory’s conference center for this conference if Deron had not found it already booked. I think it’s time to plan ahead and take our hospitality dollars to universities instead of multi-national corporations scrambling to avoid buyouts.

Aside from this harsh lesson, we have enjoyed extraordinary sponsorship this year. Barb Stengel, Jeff Milligan, and their committee and subcommittees have handsomely compensated for the hotel hassles with a fine program that has conserved our most rigorous standards and best conference traditions, honored two of our great elders, integrally involved our distinguished guests, given attention to books by PES authors, mentored new members, invited discussion of work-in-progress, and reached out both locally and globally. Thank you, all—and especially Sasha for his gentle, efficient leadership.

The motion:

Be it resolved that future PES conferences after 2008 are to be held at non-profit conference centers, universities, and similar organizations.

· Barb: We need some data and a more thorough discussion with wider membership to make a decision like this.

· Michael: There is a danger of going to conference centers; I don’t have enough of experiences. I don’t think it’s a matter of better planning and planning in advance. My experience was better, because of the help and guidance I received. We need to rethink our procedures, have more permanent or professional help.

· Sasha: Susan’s motion is too restrictive and may not allow enough flexibility.

· Michael: I motion to put together a task force to rethink structural options for creating and negotiating hotel and/or conference centers contract in a more systematic and efficient way.

· Susan: Friendly amendment is to put this discussion in the context of the response with the 2006 Proposal by Nick Burbules, because it will affect the role of the President. She withdraws her initial motion in favor of Michael’s

· Michael accepts the friendly amendment. Debbie seconds. Motion passes.

4. Executive Director’s Report

PES Executive Secretary’s Report

March 15-18, 2006

Sasha Sidorkin

Membership

1989-90--239

1990-91--250

1991-92--279

1992-93--310

1993-94--322

1994-95--358

1995-96--465

1996-97--441

1997-98--459

1998-99--527

1999-00--522

2000-01--479

2001-02--459

2002-03--445

2003-04--477

2004-05--447

2005-06--465

2006-07--412

The number may not be accurate because of the database conversion. The stats will be better next year.

Conference Registration

120 people pre-registered.

New on-line registration system

There were many errors and problems with the database; Ii is better now. The system significantly reduces manual work, and minimizes mailing costs. Most people seem to use it with ease, but suggestions are welcome.

Financial Status

Here is the snapshot of our assets:

FUNDS--	April 30, 2004	April 30, 2005	April 19, 2006	March 12, 2007
OPERATIONAL FUND	32,997.40	53,131.19	48,063.60	53,704
KNELLER LECTURE	70,328.42	75,550.91	77,353.36	80,811
LEGACY FUND	17,850.98	20,355.15	21,079.73	21,059
TOTAL	121,176.8	149,037.25	145,492.11	155,574

We have switched our broker from Morgan Stanley to Meryl Lynch. We have a better service now, and more flexibility with foreign deposits.

Sheraton has negotiated with Deron, and assured him that Food and Beverage numbers will be negotiable. However, they refused to renegotiate once the contract was signed. We have not noticed the higher than usual amount for F&B in the contract; all efforts to renegotiate failed. As the officer of the Society who actually signed the contract, I accept full responsibility for the error. As a result of the error, the Executive Board had to raise registration fees and provide more than usual food for the conference. We welcome member’s input on whether we keep the higher registration fees in exchange for better food. Part of the cost was offset by generous institutional contributions, especially by the University of Oklahoma and Georgia State.

· Michael moved to approve, Debbie seconded; report approved.

5. Committee Reports

Program Committee Report – Barb Stengel. Program Chair Report

I begin with a long list of acknowledgements and thank yous:

The Program Committee worked smoothly and well (and quickly!) to make the entire review process remarkably simple. I thank Kathleen Knight Abowitz, Heesoon Bai, Megan Boler, David Carr, John Covaleskie, Paul Farber, Charles Howell, Kathy Hytten, Huey-li Li, Jeffrey Ayala Milligan, and adjunct member James Stillwaggon who served as special reviewer on all alternative session and work in progress proposals.

Jeff Milligan was a "dog with a bone" in reviewing alternative session proposals, working with me to identify and develop other sessions and putting together an "embedded conference" that helps to make clear the connections between our work and that of K-12 educators.

John Covaleskie reviewed work in progress proposals as well as many paper session proposals to develop a collection of seven interesting work in progress sessions. His work to inaugurate this new feature of the program was thorough, intelligent, generous in spirit and much appreciated.

Joyce Atkinson was a pleasure to work with as we implemented OJS for review for the first time. She and Liz Jackson were both quick to respond to questions and pleas for help from me or from the membership. Joyce's clear grasp of the OJS system and of the needs of a Program Chair enabled her to anticipate what I needed; she saved me time and confusion, and I thank her.

President Susan Laird invited me to Chair the Program Committee with a mandate to "democratize" the program while maintaining high standards of quality. The Presidential Honors Project, the embedded conference and work in progress sessions were her ideas that Jeff, John, the membership and I have put into place. I acknowledge the vision, her vision, that guided the work that we have done.

Susan Birden, with the support of Wendy Kohli, employed skills in cross-cultural communication, contract negotiation, and event management to pull off the Presidential Honors Project centered on Jane Roland Martin's work. Every detail was checked and rechecked and I thank her.

Many thanks to those accomplished members of the society who served as mentors for our inaugural work in progress sessions: Nick Burbules, Bob Floden, Fran Schrag, Susan Verducci. Barbara Houston, Frank Margonis, and Jim Garrison.

Nance Cunningham took on the position of Book Exhibit Coordinator and took it seriously, breaking new ground with "Meet the Author" and "Book Chat" sessions offered along with the display of books. She has operated with care and efficiency and her fine work must be recognized.

Sasha Sidorkin and Deron Boyles have always had my respect and affection. Now I just plain love them. We have kept constant virtual company over the past six months and they have responded to every query and request with wit and competence. I cannot thank them enough.

The statistical report for the 2007 conference program is as follows:

The Program Committee received 94 paper proposals (down slightly from last year). Of those, 27 were accepted (24 Concurrent Sessions, 3 General Sessions).