Philosophy of Education

Executive Board Meeting

March 27, 2003 and March 31, 2003

Thursday, March 27, 5pm – 7:45pm

In attendance Schrag, Alston, Katz, Haroutunian-Gordon, Hytten, guest - Siegel

Monday 8:15am – 10:15am

In attendance Schrag, Alston, Katz, Haroutunian-Gordon, Hytten, guests – Burbules & Garrison

1.   Approval of minutes of 2002 Board Meeting

Katz motion, Haroutunian-Gordon second, passed unanimously.

2.   President’s Report – Sophie Haroutunian-Gordon

There has been activity on a couple of fronts.  The past presidents panel is a new addition to the program.  A good deal of time was spent discussing this panel and coming up with this year’s issue.  The goal is to think about continuing this conference feature into the future.  The other big item is the Legacy Fund, discussed below.  Haroutunian-Gordon thanked all of the members of the executive board for their efforts. 

3.   Executive Secretary’s Report – Kathy Hytten

At the start of the 2002 meeting (4/19/02), 399 members had paid 01-02 dues.  At the start of this meeting, 384 members have paid for 02-03 – we expect more will pay at the conference (e.g., 38 conference attendees have not paid dues for 02-03).  Some of the discrepancy may be due to the three week later starting date for the meeting last year.   Here are the membership numbers for all the years we have in our database:

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           455

2002-03           384 (keep in mind that some members pay dues at the conference)

2003-04           21 (paid already)       

New Members:  We have 45 new members this year (last year we had 40, in 00-01 we had 51).  13 of these new members are attending the conference:

Financial Status:  I am still in the process of reconciling our finances from the final figures Barb Stengel handed over to me last fall, and in light of the fact that we shifted our brokerage firm, reinvested the Kneller fund, and created the Legacy fund – which we transferred $9,890 into from our operating fund (in addition to the $5110 in donations so far).  We seem to be operating within budget.  However, it is unclear at this point whether we will be able to pay all our bills without the money we transferred – we may need to take it back out of the Legacy fund and return it to the operating fund. 

The Miami conference is a bit more costly than the previous year – particularly as we have to pay room rental charges ($3600). 

The dues increase has generated more funds for the society, so this has helped.  Dues from 02-03, paid by 384 members, have generated $19,536.  We generated $20,318 last year from 455 dues paying members, and $21,732 from 479 dues paying members in 01-02.  We have had some complaints about the dues, particularly from emeritus members, so this is something we should discuss.

Change In Dues Structure Notice:  Some emeritus faculty have been concerned about the high dues costs.  Letters from these members were shared with the committee.  I have been telling these members to pay at the rate that they feel comfortable.  We will institute this as a policy next year and put a note of the change on the dues letter.  We will also continue to have a place on the dues letter for Legacy Fund contributions.

Investment Committee:  We have shifted our investments based on the advice of the investments committee; however, there has been no noticeable gain yet (although there is less loss).

Budget Approval:  I based the budget for 03-04 on figures from 02-03, as I have not yet been able to figure out exactly how much we will spend this year.

Kneller Budget for 2004 Conference:  Because the Kneller fund is has not gained much interest, we should keep our spending from that fund at a maximum of the previous year’s amount of $2500.

Committee Appointments:  Last year we recommended that committee appointments be announced at the business meeting to take effect as of July 1^st each year.  Schrag has appointed people for all upcoming vacancies, so this policy has been implemented.

Paypal:  We are now charging additional fees to recoup the fees charged by paypal.  The use of paypal is growing.  Our new members are taking advantage of paypal in particular (22 of our new members this year paid through paypal).  Overall, we have had 56 transactions on paypal since July 1, 2003.

4.   Issues Discussed by the Executive Board

Conference Dates:  We need to remember to check dates of our annual conference to avoid conflicts, especially with Pacific APA (which is important for us as philosophers), Great Britain PES and AERA.  Long discussion about the dates ensued.  We can’t have it much earlier than late March because of program committee needs.

Discussion of Dues, Emeritus Category, and Membership:  We want to keep long-term members connected to the society and to reach out to other folks.  Katz suggested a friendly email reminder to all people who haven’t paid their dues for the fiscal year; an encouragement to pay before the fiscal year ends.  One idea for increasing membership is to create a master PES email list to give to the membership committee chair so then they can encourage members to nominate people for PES.

Legacy Fund:  Discussion of how we should use the funds.  We agreed to waive registration fees for students who give a paper during a concurrent or general session during the 2004 meeting.  Our goal is to eventually commit at least $1000/year.  We will commit $500 next year, and set up a protocol for how to expend the money, considering such possibilities as free rooms, lunch waivers, and registration fee waivers, etc.  We will also consider allotting some funds for other members in need who are not students.

Committee Work:  We need to get committees working on things.  This needs to be set up at the previous year’s meeting.  We will start by creating letters welcoming people on to the committees, the roles that they will serve, and describe the mission of committees.

Executive Board needs to help COPA to become a more active PES committee, as they are the political conscience of the society.  COPA can do whatever is important for the profession (e.g. deal with a loss of positions, political leadership, take a proactive stance, lobby for issues in the profession).  They are the committee charged with protecting us as a profession.  COPA also should follow up prior idea about testing (Arnstine & McLellan).

Chris Higgins will be moved off the membership committee (because he is program chair next year), and Randy Curren will be added instead.  Schrag followed up on this.

5.   Fellow Status & Approval of candidates for Fellow

The status of “fellow” has been discussed at the last several meetings.  Siegel moved to leave fellow status as it is until someone lays out a reason to change it and then we will deal with a change to the constitution.  We reported out to the membership at the business meeting that the issue has come up year after year, sentiment to change, but no specific argument made to do this. 

Candidates approved for fellow:  Ron Glass, Kathy Hytten, and Kal Alston.

6.   Educational Theory and Yearbook Reports - Nick Burbules

Presented at the business meeting – further detailed under new business below.

7.   Committee Reports

No official reports from committees were given at the Executive Board meeting; all were given at business meeting.

Hospitality Committee – Harvey Siegel

Hotel is good.  Room blocks met.  No real report.

Investment Committee – Michael Katz

Goal for the Legacy fund is to have a small group of people who are not afraid to solicit – they should target individuals to make contributions.  We need to call people as part of a systematic campaign.  Letter writing should start with Schrag as new president.  Committee established for Legacy Fund:  Denis Phillips, David Hansen, Sharon Bailin, Michael Katz and Sophie Haroutunian-Gordon.  Group will decide what to do – how to get target list and start calling.

Alston suggested honoring PES 60^th anniversary – give $60 for 60^th.  The investment group will decide how to recognize people and to create an annual giving opportunity.  Goal $10,000 for next year.

Election Committee – Reported Submitted by in writing by Barb Stengel, Chair

The Election Committee included:

            Barbara Stengel, Chair

            Walter Feinberg

            Michael Katz

            Deborah Kerdeman

            Susan Laird

            Kathryn Morgan

            Harvey Siegel

The Committee named Bob Floden as the choice for President-Elect.

Kal Alston and Victor Worsfold were nominated for the open position on the Executive Board.

Ron Glass and Cris Mayo were the nominees for COPA.

Executive Secretary Kathy Hytten conducted the election by mail.  Kal Alston was elected to the Executive Board and Cris Mayo was elected to COPA.

8.   Approval of site, budget, Program Chair, and Program Committee for 2004 conference

Meeting will be in Toronto in 2004.  Chris Higgins is the program chair.  The program committee is still being determined.

9.   New Business

War Resolution and Process

Central issue discussed at Monday morning meeting:  how to address members concerns about the war in Iraq and how to deal with issues like this in the future.  We need to create a process.

Garrison (visiting to talk about Iraq issue) – Personally he wants us to make a statement and thought further discussion was warranted at the business meeting.  He suggested wording for a resolution.  Katz – we should structure resolution in whereas resolved format.  Schrag suggested different wording.  Discussion about whether it is appropriate for academic societies to make political statements.  Katz - now that the war has already started, and resolutions will not have a political effect on anything, the timing or consequences of this resolution are not very useful.  As a statement of principle, it should be a personal consciousness decision, not a group statement.

Haroutunian-Gordon – It would be nice to have a resolution to allow the individuals who want to subscribe to it.  She can understand that some people might want to be individually opposed, but be against a society statement.  Alston thinks we shouldn’t change the intent of last night – there are a significant number of society members who want us to draft a resolution, and that is what we should do.

Long discussion ensued about how to draft a resolution, whether we should do it now, or whether we should make a more substantial statement with pros and cons and arguments for and against.  Consensus – we are making things too complicated.  Burbules – keep this issue very simple.  What makes this a particular philosophy of education issue – maybe we should focus on the way in which the decision was reached – it didn’t uphold process of deliberation and decision making that we value.  What are the values that we want to uphold as a society that we see this event violating?  Most of us oppose certain kinds of values that that we saw.  Schrag – prefers a declarative statement that closely relates to our field of endeavor, calling attention to things other groups don’t focus on.  Garrison – we need to have an ideal that reflects us as a society and connects us to our interests.  Alston, most people against the war have used means available to deal with that as individuals – yet there is a practical matter, it is going to be financially terrible for us if the war goes on – it is going to hurt domestic programs and education.  Alston suggests a concern on the part of some members that we did not have any forum for a discussion of contemporary issues on the program.

After a long discussion and several modifications, we all agreed to the following resolution:

Because the US decision to go to war against Iraq was reached with insufficient respect for the principles of domestic and international deliberation and debate, 

Because the war has been found by philosophers and theologians to be in violation of principles of “Just War Theory,” 

Because the war is draining resources away from essential educational needs in public schools and universities in all the countries engaged in the war,

Because the war causes untold suffering to women, children, and non-combatants in Iraq, 

We the majority of the members of PES object as philosophers and educators to the war against Iraq.”

Process:  Hytten will send resolution to PES members via email.  We will set up a message board on the website where people can discuss this issue.  Then, all members will be emailed again and a vote will be called with a date by which people should email Hytten yes or no.  Long debate ensued about how many members we needed to hear from to say that we as a society make a statement – we agreed on about 20% or 100 members registering votes.  Further discussion ensued about the message board, and the need to give options for people to identify or not identify themselves, and to make sure that we say that this is for careful and rational deliberation.  Anyone can make any points but the atmosphere should be deliberative and respectful. 

Long Term Process:  After enacting this model, we will study if this is a good process.  This war resolution will be a pilot.  We also discussed the need to create the time for such issues at the business meeting, as this is the machinery that already exists. 

Educational Theory and Yearbook

Burbules provided details about Educational Theory.  There was discussion about the potential subcontracting with Blackwell to provide certain services to us, such as billing and international marketing, and running the on line site (Illinois would remain the owner and publisher of the journal).  This would bring three journals together under one publisher (the other journals are the Journal of the Philosophy of Education, and Educational Philosophy and Theory) which could be a benefit to our members.  We also discussed transition to a new managing editor.  Implications for the Blackwell change are potentially enormous – it is not Burbules’s decision, but he will be involved.  Basic implication of going with Blackwell:  they would increase institutional prices, but probably not individual, basic direction would be an overall greater pool of revenue coming into journal, some of which would be held by Blackwell and some to the University of Illinois to cover the costs of overhead.  We are now crossing a Rubicon into an era of marketing and profits – this is something we need to consider more carefully. 

One yearbook issue is that there will be 72 papers (33 papers and 39 responses), concern about length – particularly of invited papers.  The issue here is costs of the yearbook – length is dollars.  The numbers of total papers is comparable to last year (75), but the length is much longer.  Maybe we should say in advance to the Kneller lecture that there is a page length (this year’s paper is 50+ pages).  Alston is making the decision to see how the paper winds up being edited by the author.  Burbules suggested trimming the paper down to the length of the paper he actually presented.  The executive committee discussed word count guidelines for the lecturers and presidential address – for future policy:  6000 words for any invited address, including presidential.  As it turns out, this is the current policy – we will work toward enforcing it more in the future.

PES Program Issues

Alston and Burbules talked about including electronic submissions (can submit it as rtf) for the program.  There is some concern with virus issues.  Higgins will pilot this next year.  He will also pilot non-reading concurrent sessions, with papers being made available in advance.  There was a suggestion that we establish a policy of choosing the program chair from the list of people who were on the previous year’s program committee.  Regarding this year’s program, Alston was concerned with the desire for some respondents to pre-screen general session papers.  Maybe that is okay.  Consensus is that it is useful for members to have abstracts of papers to be presented.

Meeting Adjourned, Monday 10:15am

Respectfully Submitted,

Kathy Hytten

Executive Secretary