Learning never ends for school board members
By Brad Hughes
05/09 -- Reno Contipelli is in his 17th year as a firefighter, EMT, and hazardous materials expert. Sixteen of those years also have included service on the Cuyahoga Heights, Ohio, school board.
For Contipelli, the time he spent in sessions at the 2009 NSBA Annual Conference in San Diego was just as important as the hours devoted to learning new firefighting techniques and chemical spill tactics.
“I like the fact that you see stuff that’s on the cutting edge” at the NSBA Conference, said Contipelli, a member of the 2008 All-Ohio School Board, a program of the Ohio School Boards Association. “Information is always changing. Funding is always changing. No one anticipated No Child Left Behind. You pick a topic, and it’s here.”
Contipelli’s fifth NSBA conference reaffirmed his belief in the value of the broader perspective of the workshops and networking opportunities.
“A good example was running in the [National School Board Foundation’s] 5K race,” he said. “I’m trucking along with two other board members, one from Iowa and the other from Illinois. We started talking about similar things. You pick up an idea. You say, ‘What about this?’ There’s always a best practice out there that you had not thought of.”
Contipelli doesn’t hesitate when asked about the benefits of board member professional development, especially the NSBA conference.
“One of our members went to a session (several years ago) when the SMART Board technology was first coming out,” he recalls. “We researched it when we got back home, found a funder, and we’ve had whiteboards in our classrooms integrated into our curriculum right from the beginning.”
“Our academic scores have been off the charts because we’ve been able to integrate technology into our classrooms at low cost. And it all started because one board member went to a session” at an NSBA Conference, he said.
Even before heading home from San Diego, Contipelli, three other board members from his district and Superintendent Peter Guerrera had a meeting to share what each had picked up in various conference sessions and to make plans for ideas they wanted to pursue in their district.
“People ask how going to the conference saves money? Well, it saves you time. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel,” Contipelli said. “Some school district has done something you want to do, and you’ve just got to find them. Here, you find them through the law of attraction. Everyone’s here for the same reason: public education.”
Brad Hughes is director of member support services at the Kentucky School Boards Association.