Conference offers solutions to school board members’ concerns
School board members who attended the NSBA Annual Conference in Orlando brought home loads of great ideas for addressing particular issues their school districts are dealing with, along with new energy and fresh perspectives to meet the demands of school board governance.
Israel Palma, a newly elected member of the board of the Carlsbad Municipal School District in New Mexico, said his superintendent and assistant superintendent are retiring. He got some great advice from a session on the board’s role in the superintendent search process presented by Timothy Kremer, executive director of the New York State School Boards Association.
Palma went to at least one “boot camp for new board members” session every day and said the one on the legal implications of No Child Left Behind was particularly informative. He also found Sidney Poitier’s General Session speech “so inspirational.”
Gwynn Litchfield, also a first-time attendee, said all the keynote speakers were “absolutely outstanding,” while the opportunity to network and learn about other people’s experiences was very useful for a new board member.
Other highlights for Litchfield, of the King and Queen County, Va., Public Schools, were the “deeper look” sessions on the “Care and Feeding of Your Board of Education” and “Advocacy: The Art of Community Leadership,” a workshop on “Getting Your Vision Right,” and Simon T. Bailey’s Focus Lecture on leadership.
In her district, “Many parents don’t seem to understand the value of an education,” so Litchfield appreciates all the advice she can get to improve community involvement.
David Mayley, a member of the Bay Saint Louis-Waveland school district in Mississippi, found a session presented by leaders of the Macomb, Ill., school district on improving student achievement “fantastic, on target, and very informative.”
He was also impressed with a session on the Conestoga Valley, Pa., school district’s program to provide dental care to lower-income students.
Mayley found it extremely helpful to browse the Exhibit Hall with his superintendent so they could discuss how various products could meet their schools’ needs.
“It was a great experience for all of us,” Mayley said, noting that he, along with two other board members and the superintendent, had a chance for “team building and bonding” as they compared notes on the sessions they attended.
For Olympia Chen, a member of the ABC Unified School District in Cerritos, Calif., the most useful sessions addressed high school reform; energy-saving “green” schools; the 21st century skills, particularly around the issues of global awareness; and healthier school food.
She was particularly impressed with the fun physical education activities on the Exhibit Hall that make fitness “more like a game and less like work.”
The Natchitoches Parish, La., school board is working on building a collaborative initiative to get community groups involved in helping the school system address such issues as student achievement, discipline, and parent involvement, and board member Ralph Wilson said he was “elated to attend a clinic about a board that already had an innovative approach for doing this.”
The Chesterfield County, Va., school district already had a template in place that Wilson’s district can adapt for promoting community involvement. “It was great to see other people have the same concerns and are working on solutions,” he said.
“You feel you’re getting your money’s worth when you get an immediate template for the issues and concerns you have,” said Wilson, who’s attended 18 NSBA annual conferences.
“The General Sessions were some of the best ever, and the student music groups were outstanding,” said Steve Jenkins, president of the North Summit school board in Coalville, Utah. His district is interested in purchasing new technology, buses, and seats for the basketball stadium, so he found lots of options at the Exhibit Hall.
Among the most helpful sessions he cited were a workshop on a district that formed a partnership with a local health department to provide nursing services in the schools and one presented by Pennsylvania’s Garnet Valley School District on using Jim Collins’ “Good to Great” model to improve school board governance.
Jenkins said his district has implemented programs he learned about at previous NSBA conferences, including one that has helped get 90 percent of third-graders reading on grade level. “You can’t be complacent,” he said. “You get new ideas all the time.”
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