5/3/05 -- At the April 18 meeting of the Delegate Assembly, Joan E. Schmidt, a school board member from Fairfield, Mont., assumed the presidency of NSBA for the 2005-06 term.
E. Jane Gallucci, of the Pinellas County, Fla., school board and former NSBA secretary-treasurer, assumed the position of NSBA president-elect.
Norman D. Wooten, of the Kodiak Island Borough school board in Kodiak, Alaska, assumed the position of NSBA secretary-treasurer after being elected to that position during the April 15 meeting of the Delegate Assembly. Wooten formerly served on the NSBA Board of Directors.
The delegates also elected the following school board members to the NSBA board:
• Northwest Region -- Mary Broderick, of the East Lyme, Conn., school board.
• Southern Region -- Leni Patterson, a member of the Laurens 55 School Board in South Carolina.
• Pacific Region -- Carolyn Ortman, of the Hillsboro, Ore., school board.
• Western Region -- Randy Manning, of the Central Consolidated School Board in Shiprock, N.M.
• Central Region -- Eldean Borg, of the Mount Vernon, Iowa, Community School District, was re-elected to the NSBA board.
Earlier during the conference, Brian Perkins, of the New Haven, Conn., school board, was elected chair of the Council of Urban Boards of Education and thus serves on the NSBA board.
Also elected earlier during the conference as non-voting members of the NSBA board are David Farmelo, an attorney with Hodgson, Russ LLP in Buffalo, N.Y., the new chair of the Council of School Attorneys; and Frank E. Barham, executive director of the Virginia School Boards Association, the new chair of the Federation Member Executive Directors’ NSBA Liaison Committee.
Schmidt, who had been president-elect of NSBA, has had various positions of leadership in the Montana School Boards Association, including a term as president in 1995-96.
The Delegate Assembly also adopted several new Beliefs and Policies at its meeting during the Annual Conference.
One measure that drew much discussion concerned national athletic tournaments. As adopted by the delegates, the measure states: “NSBA supports greater state and local scrutiny of national tournaments sponsored by the National Federation of State High School Associations and/or by commercial entities.”
There was a suggestion on the floor that the policy call for NSBA to oppose the establishment of national athletic tournaments, but that proposal was defeated with arguments that tournaments should be a state issue and that it would be unfair to single out athletic events.
The delegates adopted the following new Beliefs and Policies:
• NSBA encourages local school boards to address in their policies and crisis response plans the prevention of and response to outbreaks of food-borne illness.
• NSBA supports effective civic education programs and urges local school boards to provide opportunities for young people to participate meaningfully in the civic life of their communities and identify service learning opportunities that encourage and support the preparation of students for active civic participation.
• NSBA urges all education leaders to support policies and practices that help low-performing schools that serve economically disadvantaged students to recruit and retain effective teachers and leaders.
This initiative must be a collaborative and long-term effort among teachers, parents, community leaders, school board members, administrators, and institutions preparing teachers and administrators.
The delegates also adopted resolutions calling for Congress to:
• make full funding of mandated public education programs the top priority in adopting the federal budget;
• support federal tax legislation to strengthen local efforts to fund education;
• adopt NSBA’s proposed improvements to the No Child Left Behind Act;
• oppose any efforts to subsidize private, religious, or home schools with public tax dollars; and
• refrain from enacting legislation that would restrict the authority of school districts to address the issue of childhood nutrition.