A New Approach

Last month I talked about the direction CHEACT is heading, and about our mission statement: "To safeguard, promote and encourage home schooling for the Glory of God in central Texas families by assuming a regional leadership role in partnership with local, regional, state and national ministries, businesses and governments."

I also listed the key stakeholder groups that we need to participate to accomplish our mission: Central Texas Families; Support Network; CHEACT Advisory Council; Business & Ministry Partners; Facilities Vendors; Regional, State and National Organizations & Governments and CHEACT Workers.

Now that we know where we are heading, we need to figure out how to get there. With organizations, form follows function. Establishing effective relationships with each of these groups is going to require a new approach to the way the Board has worked in the past. As I said last month, we are currently organized in a functional manner. While this has enabled us to publish a helpful monthly newsletter and to hold great conferences, we have not been able to spend any effort forging these relationships. We need to consolidate current Board positions to move forward.

The first step is to change the nature of Board positions from that of doing the bulk of the work to that of leadership. That will enable us to focus on more things at once. It also means that we need your help now more than ever. We are going to extend the Board's capabilities by developing larger teams of volunteers. These teams will initially be made up of parent volunteers (like us). Soon, we will be looking for ways to include home school student clubs and internships for older students.

A prime example of this is the consolidation of Logistics, Programs and much of the work that was done across the entire Board into a new leadership Board position called "Conferences". Darla Jackson has accepted this new role. While this is an enormous undertaking, it will free the rest of the Board up to focus on other areas of concern. Darla is assembling a volunteer team to run all CHEACT conferences - offloading the work that used to consume the entire Board. This committee is going to rely on still more volunteers to pull off successful conferences. If you would like to volunteer for the upcoming summer conference, we need you!

Likewise, we are creating a new Board position called "Communications". The Communications position will be responsible for improving our effectiveness in gathering and disseminating information. Included in this responsibility will be oversight for the Newsletter, the Web Site ("we have a web site?!?" ), CHEACT information packet, and our phone and email responses (currently over 300 a month) - and any other ways that will help us communicate more effectively with our stakeholders.

It is my pleasure to welcome Alan & Julie Featherstone as our newest Board members. Alan & Julie have accepted the new Communications position. Alan brings with him a degree in Journalism, and currently manages the Austin branch for Home Elevator of Texas. Julie… well you know what Julies does! Julie also brings valuable support network leadership experience from her previous role as a leader of the North Austin Academic Co-op. Together, they will be working to ensure all of our stakeholders have all of the information that they need, when they need it. Welcome!

It follows, then, that the role of Newsletter Editor is moving from a Board position ("Publicity") to a volunteer leader position. We would like to welcome Annette Anderson as she steps into this new role. Many of you know Annette as the founder and leader of the Home School Sports Group, an enrichment program that has touched over one hundred families. After getting comfortable with the work to be done, Annette will be helping us explore ways of producing the newsletter via a Journalism Club, providing valuable mentoring and experience to older home school students.

On a similar note, if any of you are interested in starting and mentoring a Web Site club to take over responsibility for the CHEACT web site, www.cheact.org, please call the phone line. We are looking for an adult who has basic web site skills, and is interested in offering valuable mentoring and experience to older home school students.

With this new approach toward CHEACT leadership, we can begin to partner with our key stakeholder groups to be better stewards of our mission. This will take time, and it won't happen all at once, but we are firmly moving forward now. In addition, you can look forward to better communications and better conferences in the years to come!


Brett Adams
Chairman, CHEACT

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