Bylaws Voting Info

Our NCSPRA Board of Directors is proposing several necessary changes to our chapter bylaws. The changes primarily involve preventing conflicts of interest from arising among our board members. We had a situation where a previous board member was employed by a private company that directly competed with NCSPRA corporate partners. This created a conflict of interest that we were powerless to address because our bylaws did not provide any recourse. At the national level, NSPRA faced a similar situation and amended its bylaws to prevent such conflicts. Our NCSPRA board used NSPRA's revised bylaws as a guideline for our proposals.

Here is a quick recap of the changes we are proposing. Under the recommended revisions:

• Membership in NCSPRA would be open to anyone with responsibilities in educational communications or community relations. However, in order to run for the board, candidates would have to be employees of a local board of education as defined by NC law.

• The two appointed positions on our board (Presidential Appointee and State Coordinator) could be filled by people not employed by a local board of education. However, if the recommended appointees were not local board of education employees, their acceptance to the board would require approval by a 2/3 majority of the NCSPRA board.

• A board member could be removed from office for substantial reasons deemed detrimental to the organization if at least 2/3 of the NCSPRA board of directors vote in favor of the board member's removal. Under our current bylaws, the only reason a board member may be removed from office is for missing too many meetings.

• We would remove references to using the postal service for chapter notifications as we have moved to electronic communications.

• Finally, we would follow NSPRA's lead and add a Student Membership clause to our bylaws. This would allow college students pursuing the field of school PR to become affiliate members of our organization.

All of the recommended changes have been reviewed and approved by education attorney Richard Schwartz. He reviewed our entire bylaws and made additional recommendations beyond those suggested by the board of directors. However, his added recommendations were largely cosmetic and would not change the operation of our chapter. The summary above covers all of the substantive recommendations made by the board and by Richard Schwartz. However, we included all of the attorney's recommendations in our proposed bylaws to ensure that our revised document would meet the highest grammatical and legal standards.

As a chapter, we provided a detailed overview of our proposed changes during our 2024 annual meeting in December as well as during our chapter meeting in Asheville. We also provided a detailed overview in the January 10th newsletter that was sent to all members. The January 10th newsletter included a clean copy of the proposed changes as well as a redlined version for all members to review. Now it is time for members to vote on the proposed changes.

All members (except retiree affiliate members) are eligible to vote on the bylaws proposals. In order to amend the bylaws, 2/3 of members casting a ballot must vote in favor of the proposed updates. We have included the official ballot below along with the bylaws for you to review.

*The deadline to cast your vote is Friday, February 28th at 5:00 p.m.

Proposed NCSPRA Bylaws

(clean copy)

Redlined Version