NSBA Conference offers ‘wealth of ideas’
03/08 -- The NSBA Annual Conference, March 29-April 1 in Orlando, offers school board members an outstanding professional development opportunity. Attendees will learn about the latest trends and innovations for public schools and strategies for stretching your district’s budget so you can focus on raising student achievement.
But don’t just take our word for it. Here’s what some school board members who’ve attended NSBA conferences have to say about their experiences.
“As school board members, we’re all about education,” says Ida Edmunds, a member of the Troy, Mich., school board. “We expect our teachers to stay current, so why wouldn’t we want to educate ourselves? The Annual Conference is the best for sharing across the country and learning about new, innovative ideas.”
The Annual Conference provides a great opportunity to learn from districts across the nation, Edmunds says. There aren’t that many affluent, suburban districts like Troy in Michigan, “so it’s particularly helpful to learn how board members from these types of districts across the nation have come up with solutions to common problems.”
Last year Edmunds, along with a fellow board member and the district’s superintendent, found the annual session on board-superintendent relationships co-hosted by NSBA Executive Director Anne L. Bryant and American Association of School Administrators Executive Director Paul Houston “extremely helpful.” That session will be held again this year.
Edmunds also cited sessions on contract negotiations and finding common ground in the “culture wars” particularly enlightening. And, she adds, “I’m a fine arts advocate, so any time I can get statistics to help make the case for arts programs is very helpful.”
Glenn Dixon, president of the East Carroll Parish school board in rural northeastern Louisiana, says his district has saved a lot of money as a result of what he’s learned at conference sessions and the Exhibition Hall. For example, the district yielded “dramatic savings” after retrofitting schools with energy-efficient lighting and new HVAC systems.
Last year, Dixon says the most useful session he attended was on underperforming schools, which “helped shape our thinking about ways to solve the problem.”
To get the most out of the conference, he urges board members to pick a particular area they and their district are concerned with, such as facilities, instruction, or governance issues, and attend as many sessions as possible on that topic.
Dixon urges all board committee chairs to attend, and newly elected board members should definitely come to the “boot camp” conference sessions “to get a handle on what it is they’ve gotten themselves into.”
Lincoln, Neb., school board member Barbara Baier seconds that idea, noting that the boot camp sessions she took advantage of last year “really clarified my role as a board member.”
Baier found the last two NSBA Conferences “really educational and inspiring experiences.” Among the highlights were former President Bill Clinton’s speech in 2007 and Jane Goodall’s 2006 speech, which “really connected the dots between education and the environment.”
“The wealth of ideas throughout the conference gives us a chance to enhance our knowledge in so many areas and gets our entire board thinking about new ideas,” Baier says. She was particularly interested in school security issues and bullying prevention and attended several sessions on those topics.
Six of Lincoln’s seven board members, plus the superintendent, went to the last two conferences, Baier says. Attending as a group “gives us an opportunity to get to know each other better, too,” she said. “You can have the kinds of discussions you normally don’t have back home, about things like your philosophy of education.”
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