Call for 2021 Annual Business Meeting Motions

The 2021 Business Meeting will be held virtually on October 15 from 10:00 to 11:30 a.m. ET. Motions to be considered at the 2021 PAEA Annual Business Meeting at the Education Forum are due in the national office by 11:59 p.m. ET, on Sunday, August 1. PAEA volunteer groups, member programs, and the Board of Directors may submit motions. The PAEA Board of Directors is currently preparing motions to put forth for the meeting, including a motion on title change which will be based on member feedback.  

The PAEA Governance & Ethics Board (GEB) will review all motions in advance of the Business Meeting to determine if they are in order and if their intent is clear. If necessary, GEB members or designated staff will work with motion authors to revise a motion’s wording before it is published to the membership. It is not the GEB’s role to judge the merits of a motion’s content, but to ensure compliance with the Association’s bylaws and policies (except for motions explicitly intended to amend the bylaws or change Association policy) and to help the authors convey their intentions as clearly as possible. The GEB may also work with individuals or groups whose motions are similar in nature. 

As needed, motions will be forwarded to the Finance Steering Committee for evaluation of budgetary impact and, if necessary, a statement concerning a motion’s financial or other implications will be appended to it. These procedures were adopted to provide more information to the membership on the implications of each motion and to allow for more focused debate on the floor of the business meeting. Motions will be published no later than Friday, September 24 – at least twenty (20) days before the business meeting, as required by the Bylaws. 

Guidelines 

Please use the following guidelines for submitting a motion: 

• The motion must be in the following format: 
  • Brief title 
  • Motion author 
  • Rationale, including a summary of the potential impact of the motion after an environmental scan 
  • Any likely financial implications  
  • The body of the motion, beginning with “We/I move that … ” 
  • Any likely financial implications  
• The motion should be stated in a positive manner whenever possible. 
• The motion should be written clearly and succinctly. 
• The motion should allow the Board of Directors as much latitude as possible in determining solutions to an identified problem. For example, rather than “The Board should establish a task force to …,” a motion might request that “The Board should develop a mechanism to…”. 
• Considerable thought should be put into eliminating ambiguity in the motion’s language to preclude the need for objections and amendments. 
• In order for a motion to be automatically considered at the business meeting, it must be received at the PAEA national office by the August 1 deadline. Motions that are not received by this date are subject to a two-thirds (for late motions) or 80 percent majority vote (for emergency motions) on the floor of the business meeting in order to be considered. Further guidelines for late and emergency motions can be found in Bylaws Article 9.01. 

Please send motions, and any questions on the process, to Lynn Heitzman at lheitzman@PAEAonline.org. Complete business meeting “Standing Rules and Procedures” for submitting motions can be found in the PAEA Policies and Procedures Manual (see section 1).