President's Voice March 2010                     Hello everyone and I hope your school year is going well. We are only 7 months away from our 2010 DARE conference. We, as a board, are working hard at putting together a great conference for you. Steve Olson of the Fond du Lac Police Dept has done a fantastic job of getting us the Holiday Inn and is working on some great ideas for the evening entertainment. I went with Steve and met with the representative from Holiday Inn and she and her staff are very excited to be hosting our convention. I believe they will go out of their way to satisfy us. The convention is again during the baseball all-star game and we do have a hospitality room with a television as well as the lounge with several televisions and possibly we will have a band in the lounge that night. I do want to look back at the 2009 conference and once again thank Joel Dhein for the outstanding work and time he put into making sure the conference was a success. I also thank Glendale Police Dept for hosting as well as the City of Glendale for allowing us to have our convention in their City. Please relay to you Chief’s, Sheriff’s, and administration our sincere thanks for allowing you to attend our conference. I know budgets are tough and it shows me that our Chief’s and Sheriff’s really do care for our children. Please encourage them to continue with their support and allow you to attend the 2010 conference. The 2010 conference will be held in Fond du Lac at the Holiday Inn beginning July 12 through July 14. There will be a link on our website darewisconsin.org as well as the Holiday Inn website. You may remember that we did ask for your input as to meals. You may see a slight change in the amount of snacks offered at breaks as well as having only 1 breakfast, which will be a hot buffet breakfast. I ask for your understanding in the change of meal service but we as a board have looked at the cost and determined that we did not want to cut out any of our training sessions so we did go with a cut in the breakfast and snacks. I do believe we will have a very interesting and informative conference. There will be plenty of fun for the entire family as Fond du Lac has a very beautiful park right on Lake Winnebago. The park has a playground area for all ages of children. There is also a train to ride, a merry-go-round, a lighthouse that you can climb to the top of and look out over Lake Winnebago and other water rides. We also are working on a family night at the Fondy Sports Park. The Sports Park offers: Andretti super karts, Outlaw off road karts, 18 hole mini-golf, tidal wave bumper boats, 3 different batting cages, lighted driving range with interactive targets, hi-ball/aero ball trampoline games, awesome arcade, and many other activities. Please continue to watch our website for further details and registration information. Please contact you area representative or a board member if you have any questions or comments. Have a great rest of the school year and I hope to see you all in July. Mark Rasmussen