Mission Statement
Kansas Court Reporters Association is committed to promoting and maintaining
the highest standards of verbatim reporting, quality services, professional ethics, and advocating
continuing education, as well as the utilization of state-of-the-art technology.
Welcome to 2013! I’m having a hard time grasping that January is already gone. At the time I’m writing this article I’m making my preparations for our Hill Day and legislative reception in Topeka on February 4th and hoping that it will be as successful as last year. While we aren’t working towards passage of a particular bill as we were last year, it is still important to maintain relationships with returning members of the state legislature and create relationships with new members, as well as to continue to educate all of them about what court reporters do and why we are important to the judicial process. As the budget continues to be a primary issue in Topeka, I believe it’s important to continue to advocate to those in the state capitol why court reporters are worth every penny we earn. Jason Watkins will be working with KCRA again this year. Since we’re not pursing any legislation at this time, the Board has approved retaining Jason in a monitoring capacity. He’ll keep an eye on proposed bills and let us know if anything is being proposed that would affect court reporters.
NCRA has designated February 17-23 as National Court Reporting & Captioning week. We’re asking all of our members to plan something during that week to promote court reporting. It can be anything from submitting an article to a local paper or arranging to visit a class in school to demonstrate what court reporters do. There are too many possibilities to list here. NCRA has a lot of resources available on their website. I’ll post the link on the KCRA Facebook page, as well as send it out in a News2Use message. This is a wonderful opportunity to educate anyone and everyone in your communities about what court reporters do. It may also generate new students for our profession. I think we can all agree that more students/future reporters would be welcome in Kansas.
The issue of the membership status of voice writers has been brought to the attention of the officers and board by some of our members. You may remember we conducted a survey of the members regarding this matter last fall. The Board will be discussing this issue at the next meeting in preparation for a possible vote at the annual meeting in June. The date and time of the next board meeting will be posted on the KCRA website, as well as our Facebook page. If you haven’t already, please join our Facebook page to keep up with the latest news. As always, the time and location, as well as the agenda, will be forwarded to KCRA members prior to the meeting. I invite any and all members to join us at the Board meeting.
As you can see, 2013 is off and running! June will be here before we know it, I’m sure. Please feel free to contact me with any concerns or suggestions you may have. I’m looking forward to the great convention Sharon and Debbie have been working on and planning for us and hope to see you all there!
Coleen Boxberger
KCRA President