School (the) Board

 

Blog Post for Jan. 24

 

School (the) Board

 

It’s remarkable that all 50 states have their own department of education and each one has required that control of local districts is maintained at the local level. It’s also quite a challenge.

My father taught school for 35 years and, upon retirement, was elected to his district’s school board where he served for 12 more years. A career educator, Dad was a great benefit to the administrators and faculty of each of the schools in his district. He noted, however, a lack in training for the school board, which signaled a deficit in the board’s effectiveness and efficiency. Most school board members were not former teachers and furthermore had never even set foot on a campus since their own school years as students. How would they go about making recommendations and conducting oversight of the district’s education efforts without the proper training and experience?

Through this experience, Dad created a consulting business and traveled throughout the county helping to train other school board members as well as administrators on effective teaching practices and needed school improvements. He helped increase the frequency of school visits by board members so as to help them become more acquainted with the day-to-day operations, which also helped them monitor the district’s progress toward their goals.

According to the Live Handbook for Education Policy Research from the Association for Education Finance and Policy, not every state even requires that school board members receive training and that there is a lack of consistent state-level guidelines and policies stating how boards operate and receive training. Future state education reforms ought to require school board members to receive a thorough set of training to more than adequately prepare them for the important decisions they will face.

Given the ever-increasing list of hardships and innovations faced by school districts in terms of instructional methods, emerging technologies and societal challenges, it is as important as ever that school board members receive informative training regarding their roles, the lay of the education landscape, and the administrative needs in the district.

 

 

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