March 15, 2012 Meeting Minutes

Flathead CORE

3/15/2012

Amy Grout, Holly McKenzie, Diane Ericsonn, Ashley Mason, Kathy Martin, Evie Bradley, Teresa Wenum, Melissa Sladek

 

  1. Training on new WordPress site from Hillary. We need to send her the date we want for the next training. She will invoice us and include GoDaddy receipts so Laura can get payment to Hillary. Women and Timber and the Creston Fish Hatchery had offered to help pay for website hosting but at this time we are going to wait since everything is all payed up.
  2. Website is up and we should all practice using it and write down questions for our next training session which will be April 26 for next training 3-4 p.m. 4-5:3- CORE meeting.
  3. Patti will put out some instructions soon. We can ask Hillary for more handouts as well. We will invite CORE Resource folks to participate in the website committee and then arrange for who has the correct passwords and info. to edit the sites.
  4. Not enough people to do Wilderness Workshop, but Steve Archibald will do some things from the Wilderness Investigations Toolkit, from 1-3 p.m. at the COCEEC meeting next week.
  5. Steve will be interested in trying it again and perhaps we can help give some ideas for how to market it for our area.
  6. Patti and Jill Sigmund are working on updating “The Teacher’s Guide to Outdoor Education sites in NW MT”. The goal is for it to be ready for the early childhood “Reconnecting” workshop for next October 2012. They are also working on including more sites.
  7. Flathead Watershed Sourcebook has funding to print CDs. Everyone wants to update and correct typos and editing updates but then we are short of funding for converting the web pages to CD format. Resource Advisory Committee from USFS is funding source.  So the committee is working on finding the approx. $250 shortfall. CORE watershed education committee put together over $24,000 to make the original project happen. Next step is to put together activities.
  8. Flathead Leadership request for education trunks and Flathead CORE presentation. Patti has a powerpoint presentation that includes info. for Flathead CORE and Teresa said she might be able to break-away and come by to FVCC as well. Perhaps the ppt could be converted to a pdf and added to the CORE website.
  9. PLT workshop April 14 it will be at Stoltz Land and Lumber Company. It’s for secondary educators and will focus on new forestry book. There will be a morning session and an afternoon session that are each 3 hours long for a cost of $25. Holly can send out the flyers and Patti can put the flyer and event on the CORE website. Another PLT workshop will be held in Libby in April but it will be for early childhood.
  10. MT Natural Resources Youth Camp flyer was passed around as sign ups are being taken for summer, www.mnryc.org and the Flathead Conservation District will sponsor students and pay for some students. American Society of Foresters, (contact Holly McKenzie by email) also has sponsorship grants available. Laura will work on getting this on the CORE website.
  11. The Earth Day event that we normally help Valley Recycling and the Kalispell Downtown Business Association with is not taking place this year. There are other events going on about that time- Arbor Day, Clean the Fish, Patti gave a list of other possibilities. Mary Jo Gardener had said she would help with doing posters and an art contest if we did have an Earth Day Event. Laura will check with Melissa to see if she contact FVCC.
  12. Evie brought information about the teacher workshop for outdoor classrooms going on at the Hatchery on May 8, 4:30-7:30. She will contact Eliza to see about getting the information out to teachers.
  13. Lisa Bickel posts information on the MEEA website and Diann can get information to Evie and the rest of us about how to contact her.
  14. Fish Fun Day is May 23, 2012 for 3rd grade classrooms and Evie will be contacting people to help at that.
  15. Creston’s Friend’s group is looking for volunteers and contact Evie. They even are looking for campground hosts this year. Perhaps the Flathead HS IB program requires the students to put in 30 hours of community service so they might be a good match for Hatcher volunteers.
  16. “Walk in the Forest Day”, 5/19 and 10/19, may be another opportunity for an outdoor celebration. The American Society of Foresters and American Forest Foundation.
  17. Wings across the Big sky Bird Festival, 6/8-10, Flathead Audubon. If anyone wants to be a sponsor or have a table, contact Ashley Mason or Patti can pass on the information.
  18. State early childhood conference is on 10/19-20. We are doing the pre-conference on 10/18. Teresa, Kathy, Laurie LaPan and Patti are on the committee. The site and the activities need to be flushed out. Laura will send Teresa past workshop agenda. Glacier NP and Lutheran Camp were listed as possible locations.
  19. Communicating Climate Change WS, June 18 at the Community Bldg at West Glacier. She will be sending survey out to CORE and COCEEC participants.
  20. Hockaday has schedule for spring classes. They are doing their community mosaic again this year. May 19 is the “community paint” to do the mosaic painting on site.
  21. Flathead NF got the funding for “More Kids in the Woods.” It will expand the native plant garden at Glacier High. It will also fund putting in native gardens at 3 other schools – Helena Flats, West Valley, and Somers Middle School.
  22. A motion was made to have more meetings as these meetings are getting longer and longer. So we may have to limit the presentations to a few minutes and have people bring handouts.