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Meeting Minutes


Guest Chris

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I have been on before regarding Meeting Minutes and as I tried to convey to my local teacher association that what they are doing do not match up with Roberts Rules from all the responses I recieved here.

I rececently recieved the email below, from our NJEA Rep. I am still unsure is what this person is instructing me to do is correct and no one has sent me anything if it is policy. Our By-laws also refer to using Roberts Rules if not stated in the By-Laws. Can anyone tell me if what they are saying is correct. Thanks!

 

The email stated:

 

What you are sending are not official minutes until they have been approved & adopted at the executive council meeting.

There is no need to send a draft before they have been approved and then have to follow up sending official minutes to all members.  Local Association Bylaws state that you send the minutes, not a draft of the minutes. Your job is to distribute minutes not to distribute a draft of the minutes.

 

As discussed with the co-presidents I would suggest sending the draft to

Executive Council members only, before your next meeting for review & approval at the meeting the following day.  Again, I leave that up it to the co-presidents to decide how they want to handle it.

Let’s all work together on making sure the local is in compliance with all laws, so we can move forward and do great work for the members that we represent.

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RONR says that "the minutes" are not THE MINUTES until they've been approved. 

 

That said, it's common to refer to the draft of the minutes as the minutes. Otherwise, such a phrase as "the minutes haven't yet been approved" would be absurd when, in fact, everyone knows what it means.

 

As for distributing the draft, it's either distributed to all members (of the body that is meeting) so that it won't have to be read at the meeting where it's to be approved (unless a member demands it be read) or it's not distributed at all. But that doesn't prevent the secretary from asking a member to look it over for any errors.

 

Assuming we're not talking about a meeting of the executive council, I see no reason to send draft copies of the minutes to all members of of the executive council.

 

Conversely, if we are talking about a meeting of the executive council, there's no reason need to send the (approved) minutes to all the members of the association (though there's nothing in RONR that prohibits it).

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First - it's not clear from your post which body's meeting minutes are being referred to. If that body is not the executive council, do you have a bylaw requirement or some other rule that says the executive council approves the minutes of whatever other body is meeting?

 

Second, your NJEA rep is correct that "there is no need to send a draft before they have been approved...". However, as Edgar - and RONR - note, that can be very helpful since it allows members to read the draft of the minutes before they come up for approval at the next meeting, and that can save time.  I would argue that if your bylaws require that a copy of the approved minutes be sent to all members, then as long as you do that, you are not prohibited from sending a copy of the draft minutes also. Any such copy obviously should be very clearly labeled as "DRAFT".

 

Finally, again unless your rules give minute-approving authority to the executive council, any copies of draft minutes sent out should be sent to all members of the body that has the authority to approve those minutes.

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I have been on before regarding Meeting Minutes and as I tried to convey to my local teacher association that what they are doing do not match up with Roberts Rules from all the responses I recieved here.

I rececently recieved the email below, from our NJEA Rep. I am still unsure is what this person is instructing me to do is correct and no one has sent me anything if it is policy. Our By-laws also refer to using Roberts Rules if not stated in the By-Laws. Can anyone tell me if what they are saying is correct. Thanks!

 

The email stated:

 

What you are sending are not official minutes until they have been approved & adopted at the executive council meeting.

There is no need to send a draft before they have been approved and then have to follow up sending official minutes to all members.  Local Association Bylaws state that you send the minutes, not a draft of the minutes. Your job is to distribute minutes not to distribute a draft of the minutes.

 

As discussed with the co-presidents I would suggest sending the draft to

Executive Council members only, before your next meeting for review & approval at the meeting the following day.  Again, I leave that up it to the co-presidents to decide how they want to handle it.

Let’s all work together on making sure the local is in compliance with all laws, so we can move forward and do great work for the members that we represent.

 

 

There are two issues at work here: Distribution of the draft minutes, and distribution of the minutes.  The minutes don't exist before they are approved, so you could not distribute even one copy of the minutes before the meeting, even if you wanted to.

 

But you can (and many would say "should") distribute copies of the draft minutes before the meeting, but probably only to those people who will be approving them at the next meeting. (I.e., if these are board meeting minutes, then only to the board members)  RONR does not require this, since the draft minutes can simply be read aloud at the next meeting, but many would say it's a good idea, since it gives members more time to examine the draft and note any corrections that may be needed.

 

There's probably no point in sending the draft minutes more widely than that (like to the entire general membership) but some organizations do.  If you do, you should be careful to clearly mark them as  = D R A F T =   minutes, so nobody thinks they're official yet.

 

For that matter there's no requirement to send a copy of the approved board minutes to the entire general membership either, but there are many organizations that do so by rule or by custom, especially if with the minutes of, say the rep council, or other group comprising people who are in a real sense the elected representatives of the general membership.  This gives the members an idea of what topics their elected reps have been working on.  RONR doesn't require it, so it's up to each organization to make its own rules on this.

 

None of this is in conflict with what your NJEA rep said.  The only think thing I'd disagree with is "leaving it up to the co-presidents".  (Setting aside for the moment how bad an idea it is to have co-anythings in the first place.)  Unless your bylaws say otherwise, deciding how to distribute the minutes is not up to the president(s) alone--it's up to (a majority of) the group that is meeting.  I'd probably leave it up to them the presidents too, but I'd keep in the back of my mind that if that doesn't seem to be working well, I could move to change the procedure.

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Agreeing with the above responses, it is not clear to us which body's minutes are being approved.   It also seems that this organization may in fact have a rule or custom that "the minutes" are distributed to the general membership.  I emphasize, though, as Edgar Guest did, that draft minutes don't become "the minutes" until they are approved.

 

I fully agree that sending the draft minutes to the body which is too approve the minutes.... and which is almost always the same body which was meeting... is quite customary.  I also agree that the co-presidents have no authority to dictate who the minutes (draft or approved) are sent to unless there is a rule giving them that authority. 

 

It would help, if this thread continues, if the original poster would let us know if 1) they have a rule requiring the minutes to be distributed and to whom they are to be distributed and 2) be extra careful to clearly define which group was meeting, which group is approving the minutes, and which group the approved minutes are being sent to.   I do believe that in the other thread the OP stated that he is referring to meetings of the executive board (or executive council).

 

When you refer to a "meeting", without specifying which group was meeting, we don't know if was a meeting of an executive board, the general membership, or some other body.  When you refer to "members", we don't know if you are referring to members of the executive board, the general membership, or some other group of members.  Please try to be precise so we know 1) who is meeting 2) who is approving the minutes 3)who the draft minutes are being sent to and 4) who the approved minutes are being sent to.

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