● Thank you Kevin and Stephane for helping with the weekly Newsletter
ADDITIONS AND DELETIONS
● Renaming of Director School – “The Craig A. Merkey Director’s School for Aquatic Leadership”
● July Meeting – Skip monthly meeting but all committees will still provide updates by July 8, 2026
DIRECTOR REPORTS
2.1
2.2
ACTION: Approve the minutes of regular meeting of the AOAP Board of Directors held on April 15, 2026
3.2 TREASURER’S REPORT
ACTION: Approve the February Treasurer’s Report dated April, 2026
ADJORNMENT
ACTION:
Adjourn to the next Board of Directors meeting to be held on June 18 at 2:30 p.m. CST via Zoom.
ITEM
1.1:
ASSOCIATION OF AQUATICS PROFESSIONALS
EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE
DESCRIPTION: The Executive Committee is led by the AOAP President and is inclusive of the Strategic Plan, Research, Diversity/Equity/Inclusion/Justice, and Policy/Advocacy work groups. Monthly updates are provided by the President on the progress of each work group and goals accomplished during the previous month
UPDATES:
Strategic Plan: No Update
Research: No Update
DEIJ: No Update
Policy/Advocacy: No Update
ITEM 1.1:
ASSOCIATION OF AQUATICS PROFESSIONALS
CONFERENCE COMMITTEE
DESCRIPTION: The Conference Committee is led by the AOAP Past President and is inclusive of the Education, Conference Socials, Volunteers, and Exposition/Vendors work groups. Monthly updates are provided by the Past President on the progress of each work group and goals accomplished during the previous month.
UPDATES:
Education: no update
Socials: no update
Volunteers: no update
Expo/Vendors: no update
ASSOCIATION OF AQUATICS PROFESSIONALS
ITEM 1.1: PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT COMMITTEE
DESCRIPTION: The Professional Development Committee is led by the AOAP Incoming President and is inclusive of the Training, Tech School, Director’s School, and AqP work groups. Monthly updates are provided by the Incoming President on the progress of each work group and goals accomplished during the previous month.
UPDATES:
Training:
1. Met via Teams on May 19th with the Board Members to discuss topic areas that our membership has expressed a need to cover and how we can use those topics to determine our blog and webinar topics.
2. Submitted additional questions for the survey for the Mid-year training that was sent out after the training
3. Determined who would be reviewing webinars that are currently on the platform; those members will be registering soon to review webinars.
Tech School:
1. Mark B will give our verbal report to the board next Wednesday as I am out of the country for work
2. We have the agenda completed and all speakers are confirmed
3. We are just waiting on three more confirmed contact emails and phone numbers. Once those are collected by the end of this week, we will turn over the information to Kirsten and Maria who will then take over on getting the speakers to register and submit proposals
4. Our goal is to have this completed by the end of May
Director’s School:
1. Planning for next year’s Director’s School has begun, and speakers will be finalized in the coming months
1. AqP will be part of the Professional Development Committee’s responsibilities. We plan to review the AqP test questions and update any that are out of date.
ASSOCIATION OF AQUATICS PROFESSIONALS
ITEM 1.1: MEMBER ENGAGEMENT COMMITTEE
DESCRIPTION: The Member Engagement Committee is led by the AOAP Secretary and is inclusive of the Social Media, Membership, and Activities work groups. Monthly updates are provided by the Secretary on the progress of each work group and goals accomplished during the previous month.
UPDATES:
Social Media: No Updates
Membership: No Updates
Activities: No Updates
ITEM 1.1:
ASSOCIATION OF AQUATICS PROFESSIONALS
DROWNING PREVENTION COMMITTEE
DESCRIPTION: The Drowning Prevention Committee is led by the AOAP Treasurer and is inclusive of the Education, Fundraising/Scholarship, and Grant work groups. Monthly updates are provided by the Treasurer on the progress of each work group and goals accomplished during the previous month.
UPDATES:
Education: No meeting in the Month of May
Goals:
Blog-SJ and Alan-Childcare Facilities Childcare facilities and lifeguarding regulations. Unguarded facilities, staff lifeguards, contracting lifeguards. Educating the childcare facilities about the risks and only taking their program to fully guarded facilities. Highlight our tools that we developed as a committee. SJ and Alan have begun to draft this BLOG and are signed up for the June 12 Blog post date. Plan to have it ready for review by May 22.
Blog-James and Mary- State Code vs. Best Practices and requirements from certifying agencies. Perspective of ‘I’m not required to do this vs. but should I do this.’ And how the regulations, if there are any, are not the standard we should have for operations. James Myers will be developing this blog. No update
AOAP DPC SOP-Manda and Alan E-mailed to begin discussion, will be scheduling a work session soon.
Long-Term Goal-Conversation with Mary about how Cal is structured No report
Webinar-Single Guard conversation-Mary to reach out to Craig, Dewey, Wes and Lindsey-mirror panel discussion from conference No report
Mid-term Goal-SJ-Esther, JJ, Meghan, Amanda-Evaluate Grant Packet Questions and scoring and process Information PSA-Flyer-Kevin and JJ-Compression only CPR vs. Traditional CPR No report
Meeting Frequency-Every other month, second Tuesday of each month, 2:00pm
Action Items: E-mail meeting notes, e-mail goals worksheet, e-mail grant questions, Sub-committee leads-schedule your first meeting.
Fundraising/Scholarship: No Report
Grants: No report
ASSOCIATION OF AQUATICS PROFESSIONALS
ITEM 3.1: BOARD OF DIRECTOR’S MINUTES
DESCRIPTION: The Board of Directors meeting minutes for the regular meeting held on April 15, 2026, have been submitted for review by the AOAP Secretary on April 23, 2026. The minutes are inclusive of all items discussed during the meeting and have been submitted for the entire Board of Directors review no later than Friday, May 15, 2026.
RECOMMENDATION:
Approve the minutes of the regular meeting of the AOAP Board of Directors held on April 15, 2026.
ATTACHMENT: AOAP Board of Directors meeting minutes, April 15, 2026.
Board of Directors Meeting Notes
Wednesday, April 15, 2026
Meeting Called to order at 2:35 pm Central Time
I. Roll Call-
a) Attendees: Lyncee Bowman, Kevin Goodrich (2:45 pm), Donita Grinde-Houtman, Manda Groff, Cory Hilderbrand, SJ Idel, Ashley Ingram, Tammy Jaster, Joey LaNeve, Helena Machado, Craig Merkey, Alan Mogridge, Stephane Rebeck, Gwen Willcox, Kate Connell, Kirsten Barnes, Bob Kappel, Nathalie Martin, Juliene Hefter, Maria Andersen
b) Excused: Mark Basnight
c) Not Present:
II. Committee Reports:
a) Executive Committee-Joey
o Strategic Plan: committee met last week
● NDPA/AOAP partnership discussion on April 7
o Research-First meeting on April 23, 2026
● Went over introductions and overview of the committee, Great mix of volunteers
● Purpose of the committee is not to do research, but to pull together the existing research and tie that in to an operational lens
● Identified 4 research pillars- Water Competency, Work Place Safety, Training and Certification, Advocacy and Legislation, and created subcommittees that will work on each pillar
● Next meeting will be June 5
o DEIJ:
● First meeting April 15
● A lot of return volunteers, Alan is co-chairing with Kate
● Went over goals and some things the committee hasn’t went over in the past
● Created task groups and who was working on what
o Policy/Advocacy- Joey will reschedule their first meeting
b) Conference Committee-Cory
o Education-
● Request for speakers are up and closes in August
● Invites were sent out to all the room hosts and gave them a timeline of what will be expected of them
o Socials: Monday will be on site, Wednesday we are looking to having it on site if everything works out
Board of Directors Meeting Notes
o Volunteers: no update at this time
o Expo/Vendors: taking in applications, everyone is continuing to work on expanding our outreach
c) Professional Development- Gwen
o Training-
● Met on April 8 with board members to discuss goals and action items
● General welcome meeting for all committee members was April 14
o Tech School-
● Met on April 2
● Developed a framework for Reno, went over lessons learned and making adjustments to make tech school better
● Only one level of training, longer sessions and longer breaks, started discussion on topics
o Director school- everyone is coming back and working on fine tuning presentations
o AqP-will review AqP test and update any that are out of date
d) Member Engagement- Ashley
o Welcome meeting on March 24, went over goals and broke volunteers up to work in specific work groups
o Social Media: Kirsten created a social media takeover application that went out on April 8 in the newsletter, Lyncee is working on setting up their first meeting in April
o Membership: Stephane had her first meeting on April13
● Working on engaging in 3 fringe groups (young professionals, University/College, and Open water)
● Started discussing having education on managing single guard facilities
o Activities: working on getting the roundtable hosts filled and coming up with roundtable ideas for young professionals
e) Drowning Prevention- Manda
o Education: First meeting April 14
● Went over goals, upcoming blog post, and upcoming projects
● Putting together 1 webinar and possibly a second webinar
● Updated mid-term goal and want to spend time looking at grant packet questions and scoring, to see how it can be reworked to get better content
Board of Directors Meeting Notes
● Working on a PSA flyer on Compression only CPR vs Traditional CPR
o Fundraising/Scholarship: No update at this time
o Grants: March applications had 18 lifejackets and 14 swim lessons applications
● Committee reviewed applications and awarded 7 agencies, 320 life jackets and 2 agencies $500 in swim lesson grants.
III. Announcements
a) Congratulations to Maria- New AOAP Operations Manager Position
b) Recap of Meeting with NDPA
o Had a great conversation about our co location agreement, evaluated the agreement and redefining the agreement
o Kirsten sent the final agreement this morning with all the changes to the executive committee and they will send it to the NDPA and we need to give them a deadline for when they need to have it signed by.
IV. Additions and Deletions
a) No additions or deletions
V. Executive Director Report:
o Juliene is still working with GSR for Conference 2027
o Juliene and Kirsten will be doing a site visit in June
o We will have all of the conference rooms at this site, so we have plenty of room to grow at this site, we can combine rooms for larger sessions
o Working on the agreement with NDPA as well as another agreement with another group for a potential partnership
o Working on other bigger partnerships
o With the operation manager position, we will be transitioning job duties so Juliene can focus on partner groups and collaborations
o A lot has been conference, we have everything set up with the expo hall for this upcoming year
o Kirsten and Juliene are working on potential sites for future conferences 2032 and out
o Getting Keynote speakers set up for conference, Dr. Regina Lewis will be our Endnote
o Worked on different budget items for this year and next year
VI. Assistant Director Report:
o AOAP is launching a new podcast, Discussions from the Deep End, First Episode will be released on May 6, additional episodes are already scheduled to be recorded, and we will be looking for members to
Board of Directors Meeting Notes
feature, professionals to share information, and our goal is to release an episode every other week.
o Juliene and Kirsten co wrote an article for Rec Management May edition
o We have an ad for the program guide for Nevada state show
o Started working on IACET documents again
o Went to Washington DC for NIRSA last week
o We had a lag in online learning in February and March, but we did have 21 on demand courses and 8 new and renewal AqP
o A live webinar on April 28 and Mid Year Manager training on May 6
o Launched the Social Media plan
o Officially wrapped up the conference from 2026
o $181,988 in committed sponsorships for 2027, and $83,00 confirmed for 2028, we also have around $31,000 in sponsorship proposals out right now
VII. Deputy Director Report:
o No report at this time
o
VIII. Minutes-
a) March 2026 minutes
o Motion to approve- Manda Groff
o Seconded by- Donita Grinde-Houtman
o Motion Carried- passed as written
IX. Treasurer’s Report
a) Manda logged in and confirmed all accounts were accurate as reported
b) March 2026 Treasure’s Reports
o Motion to approve report- Gwen Willcox
o Seconded by- Craig Merkey
o Motion passed- approved as written
X. Adjournment
o Next meeting: Wednesday, May 20, 2026, 2:30 pm CST
o Motion to adjourn- SJ Idel
o Second to adjourn- Manda Groff
o All in favor of adjournment
Meeting adjourned at 3:15 pm CT
ASSOCIATION OF AQUATICS PROFESSIONALS
ITEM 3.2: TREASURER’S REPORT
DESCRIPTION: The April Treasurer’s Report has been prepared for review by the Board of Directors. The report shows revenues of $472,057.33 and expenditures of $224,355.62 with a balance of $247,701.71. Additionally, the overall account balance is $1,025,361.60.
RECOMMENDATION: Approve the April Treasurer’s Report dated April 30, 2026.
ATTACHMENTS:
1. April 2026 Treasurer’s Report
2. 2026 Budget Workbook Report
� � � � AOAP MONTHLY BUDGET REPORT
Report Month: April 2026
� � � Registration Summary Metric Count
Total Membership 1,989
Total Conference Registrants
Pre/Post-Conference Registrations
Technician School
Director’s School
Partner Groups
Exhibitors Booths: 44 Employees:
Banking Account Overview
Primary Operating Account Amount – 2026 to date
Credit Card Accounts = $0 balance
- Banking Account Total (Year to Date: January 1 – April 30, 2026)
Drennen’s Dreams Life Jacket/Swim Lesson Grants $ 24,268.94 Kathie Luecker Scholarship Fund $ 21,543.12
