County Meetings
When new legislation passes, PSBA is seen as the leader in analyzing it and helping members make sense of it.
Legislative Meetings |
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Stand Up for Public Education!Plan to attend the spring meeting with legislators in your areaSpring meetings with legislators are being scheduled and taking place in counties across the state. The purpose of the meetings is to provide the opportunity for open, informal discussion between school directors, superintendents, business managers and legislators about public school successes and the critical issues affecting public education today. This spring’s discussions will focus on meaningful mandate relief, charter school reform, vouchers, and basic education funding in 2012-13. The following is the schedule of spring meetings to date:
Post cards are being mailed to legislators, superintendents, business managers, and each school board member.As additional meetings are scheduled, they will be published in the School Leader News and posted on the PSBA web site at www.psba.org. We will also be scheduling Spring Region Meetings in your region, so look for upcoming articles about these meetings. For further information, contact Karen Devine, director of member relations, in PSBA’s Office of Governmental and Member Relations, at (800) 932-0588, ext. 3322 or e-mail at karen.devine@psba.org. |
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Lancaster/Lebanon Spring Legislative Breakfast, March 12 |
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Background |
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PSBA’s Legislative Action Program, which was founded in May of 1984, calls for participation from school directors in every phase of the association’s efforts to determine the legislative issues and positions most important to them. In 2007, PSBA wanted to take a step further in connecting members even more directly in the important work of the association, including their advocacy efforts. A Membership Participation Task Force was formed to make specific suggestions for changes in the organization’s structure, duties of key organizational positions and other matters. The recommendations of the task force were adopted by the Board of Directors in July 2008 for implementation in 2009. While the new organizational structure maintains the 15 PSBA regions, more assistant regional director positions have been created by linking the number of such positions in a region to groupings of school districts with common interests or other logical connections, which are named areas. Under the revised Legislative Action Program, legislative coordinators (formerly called county coordinators) are selected under each regional cabinet to help organize advocacy efforts. Legislative coordinators are the key communicators in keeping their boards and areas informed of legislative developments and to contact legislators regarding important issues. Through the structure of the Legislative Advocacy Program, school board members meet on a countywide or area-wide level with their legislators to talk about priority education issues. When are the meetings held? Generally, the meetings are held twice a year, and are organized by the legislative coordinator for each county or area. They generally are held in the fall and spring. Official notices of the meetings are mailed to superintendents and each school board’s PSBA liaison, president and secretary, but all school board members are urged to attend the meetings. |
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