Dear Colleagues and Friends in Art Education,

You may recall that in my last message to you I identified several important challenges facing the continued strength and vitality of PAEA. These included: developing incentives and opportunities for younger members to join the leadership ranks of PAEA, expanding our outreach to be more inclusive of art educators in varied learning settings across the state, advancing opportunities for our members as both teachers and artists, helping to close the perceived geographical divide in PAEA by moving the board meetings around the state, integrating distance technologies for conducting increasing amounts of association business, and streamlining the PAEA board structures for member participation and meeting schedules. In addition I spoke about the high priority of continuing to develop and expand collaborations and partnerships with other arts and educational shareholders. I would like to take an opportunity now to provide you with an update on the progress the board and I have made to address some of these challenges.

In the November 20, 2004 board meeting the PAEA Board of Directors approved my recommendation that the former meeting format be changed from a committee-reporting model to a model of focused discussions around issues of substance relating to association challenges and visioning. In the future, to open up more meeting time for these discussions, all committee reports will be made electronically to the web site and only those reports requiring board approval or discussion will be reported out at the board meetings. In addition, the number of board meetings per year has been reduced from five to four to make serving on the board more reasonable, given our own ever-expanding personal/professional time demands.

The annual summer leadership retreat will become our most important board meeting of each year and focus on leadership cultivation of younger members as well as professional development for current leaders. The full board will no longer meet regularly in Harrisburg, but will travel to schools around the state from West to East and North to South over the next two years during my presidency. Avalyn Shank, Region 5 Representative, will host our first “around the state” board of directors meeting at the Wilmington Area Middle School in New Wilmington, PA on April 23, 2005. Regional Representatives have been broadening efforts to identify non-PAEA independent school art teachers, art therapists, art center instructors, and others in visual arts education to encourage them to bring their voices to our association as members.

The Teacher as Artist in Residency Program (TARP) continues to elevate the quality and the quantity of residency applications while providing rich opportunities for PAEA teachers to step out of their daily educator duties and into roles as resident artists in other schools.

The board continues to work in collaboration with other Pennsylvania arts partners to develop and refine opportunities for celebrating and honoring the artist in every child through student exhibitions and the Arts in Education Day festivities to be held in early spring 2005 in Harrisburg.

Lastly, I am absolutely thrilled to welcome the brand new PAEA Newsletter that has emerged under the talented and creative leadership of board members Meg Barney and Avalyn Shank as co-editors and representatives of both the eastern and western portions of the state.

Thank you for taking the time to read this message and become more familiar with our efforts to grow and strengthen the organization. I would welcome your questions and comments about leadership and service to PAEA at any time. I also want to enthusiastically extend my personal invitation to all members of PAEA to attend our board meetings in the future as they travel to your particular region of the state. Each of us on the board would value your presence and comments at our meetings. Please be sure to check the “PAEA Calendar of Board Meetings, 2005-2006” @ www.paea.org for dates and locations of a meeting near you.

Thank you again for your trust, support, and cooperation as I move through the first year as president of PAEA. I am looking forward to meeting many of you in the future at our “around the state” board meetings.

Sincerely,

Randy W. Granger