When new legislation passes, PSBA is seen as the leader in analyzing it and helping members make sense of it.

SCHOOL DIRECTOR TRAINING

Timothy Allwein
PSBA Assistant Executive Director of Governmental and Member Relations

Good morning, my name is Timothy M. Allwein and I am the Assistant Executive Director of Governmental and Member Relations for the Pennsylvania School Boards Association. With me today is Curt Rose, Assistant Executive Director for School Board and Management Services. Curt has direct management authority over PSBA’s Department of Board Development Services, which conducts most of the association’s member training. You have as an attachment to my testimony, information about the training opportunities PSBA offers its members.

There is no question that educating our youngest citizens is one of the most important, if not the most important, responsibilities of our government. School board members take their responsibilities for making decisions that shape the course and the quality of education in our communities very seriously. New academic standards, new state and federal legislation, research on teaching and learning and many other factors make the job of school director a challenging one even before the factors of time and commitment are considered.

PSBA recognized the constantly evolving set of knowledge regarding the effective delivery of public education years ago and, for over 40 years, has been providing quality education and training programs for its members. While the information before you represents what we’ve done over the last few years, you should know that PSBA has trained thousands of school board members over the years on a wide variety of topics.

The association continues to emphasize the importance of continual training to its member school districts as well.

Three years ago, PSBA undertook a project to seek member input on revising the association’s strategic plan. Numerous surveys and focus groups with school board members and school administrators were undertaken in an attempt to gather information on current issues of interest to members what the future of public education might entail. Through this process, the need for effective, ethical leadership emerged as a major area of interest among school directors. The issue also surfaced during the annual retreat of the PSBA Executive Board in August of 2003.

As a result of the concerns voiced by our members on this issue, and a continued emphasis of quality school governance in the association’s new strategic plan, PSBA formed a Commission on Effective School Governance and charged it with addressing the concerns of its members.

After much research and discussion, the Commission was able to develop a set of board governance standards and a new code of ethics that were approved by PSBA’s Executive Board in September of 2005 and presented to PSBA members at its Annual Conference last October. Since then 170 districts have adopted the standards and the code in policy as the governing principles for their school boards.  Others continue to do so and we expect most districts will formally support them over the next several months.

PSBA’s work in drafting Standards of Effective School Governance is significant for a number of reasons: 

First, the organization that represents and serves local school officials – whose very existence is based on ensuring that local decision-making in public education is strengthened and upheld – has done the research, gathered input from its own members and other stakeholders and developed a clear statement of what school boards should do in order to foster student achievement.  No state mandate was needed to make this happen.  Local school officials have set the bar high for themselves.

Second, in identifying best practices for school boards, we are among the very first organizations in the country to try to give the elected officials specific tools to ensure the governance process works well.  PSBA’s work in this area already is being cited nationally, and other states have indicated they will undertake similar efforts.

Third, and perhaps most importantly for the purpose of today’s hearing, the Standards of Effective School Governance create an expectation that school board members are well prepared to make important decisions.  They call for these officials to receive training throughout their terms of office and for districts to make their professional development a clear and measurable priority.

Fourth, and again directly on point for today’s discussion, the standards represent a powerful tool for good governance since school boards themselves are adopting and holding themselves accountable for achieving them.  This is far more useful than a state mandate, because it establishes a culture in which well-informed public officials are expected. 

Consider that almost 24,000 individuals participated in PSBA’s board development programs in the past four years alone.  They attended sessions on such subjects as No Child Left Behind, legal issues, construction issues, technology, negotiating and raising student achievement, just to name a few.  It is important to note that school board training has residual value because those who attend the sessions take what they’ve learned back to their respective boards.  This occurred before PSBA’s standards were developed and adopted by districts all across the state, which inevitably will lead to many more school board members participating in professional development programs than ever before. 

PSBA members do not support mandated training. While the issue has generated some controversy in recent years during the association’s platform adoption process, the governance standards recently adopted and shared with each school board in the state makes clear that continual training should be a part of each school board member’s service to his or her community.

The opportunities for board training have never been more numerous. In addition to PSBA, almost all other education organizations, institutions of higher education, the National School Boards Association, intermediate units and school districts provide training for board members. Furthermore, PSBA constantly revises its training programs to ensure that we are targeting the issues that school board members feel are the most relevant. We also modify them based on feedback from those who attend.

In addition to its “marquee” seminars, PSBA conducts customized workshops, board retreats and other types of training tailored to the needs of individual districts. The association has offered 317 such workshops between 2002 and January 31, 2006 on all sorts of topics. PSBA’s list of course offerings is more expansive than that offered in any other state. According to a recent survey conducted by the National School Boards Association, PSBA was the only state school board association that offered training in all of the 15 categories that were identified. PSBA has also begun to offer courses by Internet and through interactive technologies. The association’s weekly, bi-monthly and department specific publications offer information on current issues and trends in education. We know that these are well read from the comments we receive from the field and the survey results from the focus groups we conducted as part of our strategic planning process.

There are other reasons why PSBA does not support SB 298.

  • Even though there are dozens of professions that require continuing education, none of them requires individuals to pass an examination in order to retain their professional status or job. Neither school board service nor service as any other municipal official should be subject to a statewide certification based on a whether or not the individual has undergone training.

 

  • No other elected officials who are expected to make policy and represent the views of their constituents are required to undergo training, yet these officials oversee millions of dollars of taxpayer funds and approve spending on major projects involving community infrastructure, services to the public, and other functions
  • PSBA questions whether the Department of Education has the capacity or experience to offer quality programs to all school board members within the time constraints contained in the bill and with no additional appropriations

 

  • PSBA believes that the training provided to school board members should be done by a staff professionally trained for the job and who can deliver such training from an objective viewpoint and based on available research, rather than the viewpoint of a particular governmental administration
  • School board members are already highly educated, perhaps more so than any other municipal officers. The most recent survey showed that over 70% of school directors have a bachelors, masters or doctoral degree and an additional 14% have taken some college coursework.

 

  • Only one-quarter of all states presently mandate board training. Of those states that do have such a statute, none require anywhere near the 40-hour obligation mandated by SB 298.  A quick survey of those states shows that newly elected members have a requirement for 9-12 hours per year. Some states require incumbent board members take an additional 6-7 hours per year after that. Still others have no hourly requirement, but simply state that individuals must be trained in certain areas each year. Where states reported a consequence, it usually was toward the individual, not the school district. Only one state, New Jersey, reported that loss of office was a potential consequence of non-compliance, but that appeared to be the maximum punishment.

In conclusion, PSBA believes that school board training should be left up to each and every school district. We would like to reiterate that school boards are making decisions to adopt PSBA’s standards of governance, which ask boards to place a requirement on themselves to receive training. This self-imposed mandate will be a greater incentive to individual board members to take advantage of training opportunities than a state mandate to do so. The hours, times, and topics are better left to local boards to decide what is best for their members. Furthermore, placing a statewide mandate for training on board members is a further tax on the time of those who serve, most of whom already volunteer endless hours of public service for the sake of the children in their community.

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