Lynn Gaston posted on November 01, 2010 07:00
· Tools for Schools Scholarships – MABE has continued its hugely popular Scholarship program that is designed to encourage professional development among staff. This year, Patti Jo Beard, Keith Jewell, and Cynthia Yost of Harford County, and Mike McLaughlin of Calvert County have been approved to attend the EPA’s National Tools for Schools Conference (http://www.iaqsymposium.com/ ). The conference is being held at the Grand Hyatt in Washington DC on January 13th through the 15th.
· AGRiP – Group Insurance Pool Chair Ron Miller and Workers’ Compensation Fund Chair Melanie Wernig, along with Administrator Steve James attended the Association of Governmental Risk Pools “AGRiP” (http://www.agrip.org/ ) Governance conference in Nashville, Tennessee. The conference featured multiple sessions created to assist Pooling Trustees better govern their respective Pools. Sessions included Effective Board Communications, Developing a Leadership Culture, a Pooling Retrospective and a Practical Guide to Broker Compensation. The group also heard from author Jim Brown who spoke about raising the bar on governance excellence by teaching the Seven Disciplines of Governance Excellence as covered in his book The Imperfect Board Member. The attendees also participated in facilitated discussions of pooling issues with their peers from across the country.
· New Kent County Trustee - Steve James, Director of the Insurance Programs at MABE met with Dexter Lockamy, Chief Operating Officer for Kent County, to review the role of Trustee for the Group Insurance Pool and the Workers Compensation Group Self Insurance Fund. Dexter comes to Kent County with a diverse background in Financial Management and Consulting. In addition to the role of Trustee, John O’Donoghue and John Magoon, reviewed the various services provided by the MABE Claims Unit and the two Risk Management Officers who serve on the behalf of the members of the Pool and Fund.
· MABE Services Presentation – John Magoon recently attended a Maintenance Directors meeting at Harford Glen, in Harford County and provided a Property Conservation presentation. He provided an overview of property losses that the insurance Pool has suffered over the past years, and a variety of services available to MABE members that included Loss Analysis, Peril Inspections, Infra Red testing, Property Conservation Training, and changes to the Maryland Boiler Safety Law that will affect owners and operators of pressure vessels. As a result, an additional networking meeting will be held at the MABE offices on Thursday January 20th 2011.
· School Risk Managers Meeting – The School Risk Managers group met in October and benefited from a very informative presentation provided by Art Robinson, Regional Director of Absolute Software (http://www.absolute.com/en/) , makers of “Computrace”. The commercial software provides businesses an effective means of tracking laptops and improving the odds of their retrieval if lost or stolen. Services include commands from the Absolute Customer Center to freeze a device, delete data, or – in the event of a theft – contact the Absolute Theft Recovery team who will engage with local law enforcement to recover the computer and solve the crime. Sensitive data from lost or stolen laptops can be remotely deleted and an audit log of the deleted files can be created to prove your compliance with government and corporate privacy regulations.
· United Educators to hold webinars – United Educators the Reinsurer for our School Board Legal Liability Coverage has been ramping up their on-line training. They have an on-line course coming up that deal with Contractual Liability on November 17th, as well as several others. To see their full schedule of courses go to: (http://www.ue.org/ ). Members of the MABE Insurance Programs will be granted a user id and password if you do not already have one.