First State Education has opened a Center for School Board Excellence in Governance that will offer short online training videos.
A Delaware nonprofit dedicated to encouraging more public involvement in education is launching an online Center for School Board Excellence in Governance.
First State Educate’s center will build on its monthly community action meetings that examine topics of interest to school boards and the people who interact with them, including how agendas are set or what to expect when you’re speaking in front of a board.
The ultimate goal is to help families and communities become engaged with their school districts and improve the educational outcomes for their children in a state in which only 31% of students are proficient in math and 41% are proficient in English.
The nonprofit may be best known for seeking out and aiding candidates to run for school board, and the center has grown out of that word.
Julia Keleher
“We want to invest in people around how to do this work,” said Julia Keleher, chief strategy and operating officer. “We’re investing in people who want to be school board members because we think it’s so important.”
Don Patton, president of the Christina School Board, applauded First State Educate’s move.
Since being elected to the Christina board, he’s been an outspoken advocate of more training for school board members.Â
Many come on the board without knowing much about how the district operates or how its finances are structured, what the board’s duties are, how it’s affected by Freedom of Information Act rules or the importance of following parliamentary procedure, he said.
“You need to know these things before you get into this, and when you get into it, make sure it’s something that you’ve got the right training for,” Patton said. “You can make the right connections when you do that. Because if not, then I think the people we step into this to serve are going to get hurt the most, and that’s the kids, the students.”
Ultimately, Keleher said, First State Educate hopes the community action meetings and school board center will lead to a wider pool of people who understand more about the job and feel more competent to take it on.
There are a lot of national vendors and conferences who offer school board training.
“What we’re trying to do is fill the gap between what’s available for school boards now and what we can provide,” she said.
New state laws require school boards to take financial responsibility training, as well as education issues about due process and special education.
School board training
The Delaware School Boards Association offers a book camp for training school board members. Patton said it was the only training he’s been given in the four years he’s been a school board member. Efforts were unsuccessful to reach the association for comment about First State’s program.
The community action meetings are designed for the general public to understand more about how school boards work and how they can best interact with them, she said. They are free.
The next one, set for Thursday, Aug. 15, at 5 p.m. will focus on speaking at a school board meeting. Register here.
Keleher said First State hopes that knowledge gleaned from the community actions meetings will give the public a different capacity for holding board members accountable.
The topics in the center will focus more on what a school board member might need.
“What are the rules of order? How is a board meeting supposed to be run?” she said. “You can’t just sit there and say and do whatever you want and decide how long things are going to be or who makes them look like. There’s rules, and everybody needs to know the rules.”
The online videos will feature national experts and will be available on demand online.
The video posted now is “Successful School Board Meeting Practices,” put together by Lead-ology LLC, a consulting firm devoted to leadership.
The 29-minute video is described as “a primer for school board members and members of the public in running and participating in effective meetings.”
Don Patton
The center’s next video is expected to be on financial management and then ethical decision making.
Right now, the center’s videos will be open to anyone.
At some point, Keleher hopes, they may be only for school board members or those who are interested in running, with the hopes that people who do get elected will stay in office job longer.
Patton said that nationally about 70% of school board members do not run for re-election. He believes that’s because they were not prepared for what to expect and find the process overwhelming.
He’s pleased to see First State Educate jump into the training arena.
Delaware is not the only state where school boards need training and to better understand their roles. He just returned from a national school board meeting where he heard the same thing from all over the country.
Most school board members think they are there to do whatever a superintendent wants, Patton said. They hire the superintendent and then get out of the way.
However, he said, school board members still have a right to understand not only what the superintendent is doing, but what information and data those decisions are based on. The board also has the right to evaluate the superintendent’s job performance.
“Learning what the real, true role of a school board member is, and the details of the things you need to know, I think gives people a better opportunity of making intelligent decisions, rather than just going along to get along,” Patton said.
He thinks First State Educates center is a good first step, but hopes it evolves into some in-person training, too.
Patton said he’s learned that when he needs to understand something, he learns best by talking to other people who have had different experiences than he has.
“I learn better by being able to talk directly with people, being able to ask questions about something,” he said.
“Maybe the ultimate way to do it is to do both.”
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