For many schools budget cuts have only made building and maintaining forensics programs more difficult. We as coaches know the immense benefits speech and debate education offers our students, yet too often we feel alone in making the case to principals and school boards that our activity is worthwhile. One of the central missions of the National Forensic League should be actively working to promote forensics to officials in the highest educational leadership positions, who have significant power to redirect resources. This can be done by:

1. Hosting a national conference for every state's secretary of education or similar ranking educational officials. The conference should feature talks from researchers who have substantiated the benefits of forensics education and personal testimonials from students and coaches who have profoundly benefited from the activity.

2. Cultivating significant relationships with professors at colleges and universities that can lead to additional research in hopes of further validation of the positive effect that speech and debate education has on student achievement.

3. Providing additional training and supporting materials to state and local speech and debate organizations that will improve their efficacy in advocating for forensics programs at lower levels of government.

The NFL is to be commended for making great strides in its efforts to provide easily accessible materials online to assist new coaches. But it's important to remember that new coaches face many daunting challenges beyond simply learning how the league functions. My plans include changing the punishment/incentive structure for NFL districts and working to develop no cost, in-person training on forensics program administration through:

1. Scrapping the punitive Red/Yellow/Green district status system that can penalize district's national qualifiers for insufficient chapters and new degrees (described here).

2. Increasing instead the incentives offered through the reward quota system (described here) by adding recruiting new schools (who also enroll a minimum number of members) as a method of reaching bonus status.

3. Directing the NFL Development Coordinator to prioritize securing sponsors for regional coach training events that can be offered at no cost to new coaches. By working with experienced coaches around the country, these training events could focus on the "real" concerns that most new coaches have including fundraising/budgeting, advocating for forensics with school administration, building student interest, and of course basic functions of the NFL.

4. Reducing or eliminating per member NFL fees for schools that demonstrate a significant percentage (to be established after study) of students receiving free or reduced student lunches.

No issue has been more influential in my decision to seek your vote than this one. As a member of the Board I will:

1. Work to stop the sponsorship of topic areas and wording without approval by at least the Public Forum Wording Committee.

2. Seek to expand the involvement of all coaches in the league in the selection of Public Forum topics. This can be achieved through a period of public comment on proposed resolution wording, a periodic ballot for the membership at-large to vote on potential topic areas, the expansion of the Wording Committee itself, or some blend of these and other solutions. The key principle is that the Public Forum topic process should be made more inclusive of all coaches just as the Lincoln-Douglas and Policy processes are.

Related to the concerns over Public Forum topic selection are broader concerns about the transparency of the league in general. In order to create greater confidence in the integrity of the NFL and its officials, I advocate that the league should:

1. Publish a budget summary on the NFL website and in the Rostrum each year.

2. Publish the amount donated by each sponsor and any terms associated with the donation immediately upon agreement with the sponsor.

3. Publish more detailed transcripts of NFL Board of Directors meetings and minutes from other committees convened by the NFL as appropriate (wording committees, special event evaluation committees, et cetera).

4. Work to clarify in rules the responsibilities of district chairs, committee members, and alternates. Establish clear parameters for how to deal with protests at district tournaments.

Invariably we all have some rules of our league that we'd like to see addressed. My conversations with coaches from around the country have led me to conclude that the NFL should:

1. Increase the number of students who earn automatic requalification to the same event at the following year's Nationals from six to 14.

2. Increase the NFL points awarded for Humorous Interpretation, Dramatic Interpretation, and Duo Interpretation to six for first place, five for second, and so forth. This change would bring all NFL qualifying speech events to the same points standard.

3. Increase the NFL points for all non-NFL qualifying speech events to five points for first place, four for second, and so forth.

4. Give speaker awards for Lincoln-Douglas Debate and Public Forum Debate (individual awards) at NFL Nationals.

5. Scrap the current judge information cards used at NFL Nationals in Policy and Lincoln-Douglas in favor of mandatory paradigm submission.