What do school board members actually do? What makes for an effective school board member? What resources are available for current and prospective school board members?
A panel discussion on the roles and responsibilities of school boards and school board members tried to answer those questions June 25 at the main Akron-Summit County Public Library downtown.
This event was presented by the League of Women Voters of the Akron area, the Akron NAACP, Akron Promise and Honesty for Ohio Education.
Panelists were Reno Contipelli, northeast regional manager for the Ohio School Boards Association; Ana Chapman, a member of the Berea City School District Board of Education; and Malia Lewis, president of the Board of Education of the Cleveland Heights-University Heights City School District.
Lathardus Goggins II, a social and emotional learning specialist at Applied Academic Solutions and education chair for the Akron NAACP, moderated the discussion and asked the questions.
Editor’s note: The transcript has been edited for length and clarity.
Listen to the discussion:
Lathardus Goggins:
Thank you everyone for being here. We’re here to explore what it means, what it takes and what’s the significance of being a school board member.
Share a little bit about who you are, the role that you play and what does it mean to be a school board member? What are some of the joys and challenges of being a school board member?
Malia Lewis:
I am in my eighth year on the school board for the Cleveland Heights-University Heights City School District. One of the biggest joys of serving on the school board for my district is the cohesion I enjoy with my other board members, the five of us. It hasn’t been the same five for the eight years I’ve been on the board.
All of us have a singular focus on our 5,000 kiddos and what’s best for them, and everything else sort of takes a distant second place.
We don’t always agree on everything, but we do agree that we have to work on what’s best for our students. As a district, we’re peculiar because we’re in a part of Northeast Ohio with an overabundance of private and parochial schools.
So half, or slightly less than half, of our school-aged children in the community attend public school, but the flip side is that 75% of our budget comes from locally voted on real estate property tax levies. So, we have huge support for the public school district in our community, even though we don’t have all the kids in our buildings.
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Representing my community and doing what I think is best, or what I hope is best for our kiddos, is a huge joy. Challenges are easy. We are constrained by Columbus and Washington, D.C.
I do feel like I am constantly beating my head against a brick wall when it comes to public policy at a higher level.
Ana Chapman:
I’m in my 12th year as a member of the Berea Board of Education. Berea is a suburb of Cleveland in Cuyahoga County and we also have about 5,000 students in our district.
I’m also a teacher. I just finished my 32nd year as an elementary music teacher in a different district. I’m a mom of three proud public school graduates.
My joy being a board member also comes from the students and their successes and our staff. Graduation is usually my favorite event of the year because there’s just a lot of joy and smiling and hugs, even though I don’t know every single one of the 5,000.
But having been a mother while I’ve been a board member, it was just pure joy to see all of my kids’ friends that I’ve known since they were in kindergarten walk across that stage. It’s a privilege that I know most people don’t have.
I also just enjoy the opportunity to serve my community. My parents were immigrants in this country. I’m a first-generation American. So, being able to see my name on a ballot and run for office was something that brought my parents great joy and myself as well. I’m proud that I could show my children that I could do that.
A challenge is definitely Columbus, especially since for some reason there’s hatred toward public education, even though 90% of the kids in the state attend public schools. Also, a challenge that I find is that everybody thinks that they’re an expert at education because they went to school, but school is very different than it was when all of us were in school.
It has changed quite a bit in the last 10 years, and since the pandemic, it sped up even faster. Unless you are really in a public school on a regular basis, you have no idea what it’s like.
Even for some board members, unless you’re very involved or unless you’re also an educator, or your kids are in the schools, it’s hard to know everything that’s going on,
But I find that within the public, their expectations of what they think we should be doing versus what we can and are allowed to do is always a struggle.
Reno Contipelli:
Before I took this job at the Ohio School Boards Association as a northeast regional manager, I had spent 20 years on my local board in Cuyahoga Heights. It was very rewarding.
I taught there and then switched professions, became a firefighter, and then I got on the school board.
One of the things, like Ana said, graduation was just a great day for us. Every board meeting, we would have kids come to the board meeting and showcase what they’re doing in third grade, what they’re doing in science club, and showcase the students of the month.
It just gives you joy because of all the negative things that go on with public education, you get to see the joy of those kids that get to present something to the board. It’s worth it.
Now that I’ve been in this position for about 11 years, I’ll meet kids that graduate now and they’ll say, ‘Oh, Mr. Contipelli, how are you doing? I’m a doctor, I’m a lawyer, I’m an engineer, I’m doing this. I’m married and have kids.’ So, that’s how you know that that’s the reward right there.
What I also will say, and they touched on it too, is that what I’ve seen over the last 30 years is two things: eroding tax base, which means it’s more stress on you out there as homeowners, and eroding local control because local control is what you want to preserve.
Because you’re here in Akron, those board members in Akron know what’s better for you than the people in Columbus and Washington, and that’s what we fight every day in public education.
Lathardus Goggins:
Does education still play the role of providing opportunities for our citizens to move socially, to actively learn how to be participants in our community? How has the role of a board member changed in 30 years, since the 2000s, to put it into context? Then, if you touch on how it’s changed, what does that mean in terms of the characteristics or the kinds of things that a board member would need to be able to do?
Reno Contipelli:
Since 2000, here’s how I think things have changed. I went back to the eroding tax base. I went back to eroding local control. We’ve had No Child Left Behind. We’ve had federal and state mandates that we don’t have a choice about. We have to teach.
Well, there’s only so much time in a day that you have to teach, so you’re pulling things away that you want to teach the kids . The other thing too is that they’re not giving you money for those mandates. That’s why they’re called unfunded mandates. So, you gotta find the money to come up with that.
I’ll give you another example, public schools, they don’t have a choice. They have to educate everybody in their district. Sometimes there’s no money available. You could have one special education child, one handicapped child, that costs you $88,000 to $100,000 that you have to provide transportation or education.
You’re pulling that resource away from all the other kids that are in the classroom, and then people are saying, ‘Well, you got too much money. Why should you be on the ballot?’
They don’t understand that part of what public education has to go through. That’s the biggest change that I’ve seen over the last 23 years — the unfunded mandates and the eroding tax base and eroding local control.
Ana Chapman:
I agree 100% with that. The first thing that came to mind to me was testing and the testing culture that we live in and the way that schools are evaluated on test scores, which, in my opinion, are not the true vision of a school district.
I live in a school district that —on that new scale — the state report card is stars. They’re not letters anymore. We get between three and four stars, pretty much on everything, consistently out of five. But to me, we’re a five-star district.
Everybody’s path is different, and the public schools will cater to your child and their needs. That’s something that all kids don’t get in private schools because they don’t have to be educated, if they have any kind of disability or anything like that.
When I started as a teacher, we did not have very many state tests, and they were maybe one day out of the year, and they were super simple. Now kids get tested in every subject, starting in kindergarten on computers. Sometimes it’s more of a test of how good you are on a computer than the actual content that you’re supposed to be tested on.
The tests take place at a part of the year where it’s a year’s worth of knowledge, but in March they haven’t covered a year’s worth of material to do that test. So it’s very difficult.
I think the world has changed in the last 20 to 30 years and children are not coming to school as prepared as they used to be. They don’t have to be reading or writing when they come to kindergarten, but they have to be able to at least be a good friend and understand and follow rules. That has not been the case the last five years. Our kids have a lot of social-emotional troubles that have to be dealt with at school before they can learn.
Malia Lewis:
I agree with everything that you have both said. Public schools educate every child who walks in the door, regardless of what that child needs, and sometimes it’s very expensive. Sometimes it’s very complicated. Sometimes it’s very frustrating for that child’s family because, frankly, we don’t always get it right, but we do go in with the right intention of trying to and that’s because that’s our job. We are required by law to educate every child who walks in the door and private schools that are currently taking taxpayer dollars are not.
Also, private schools are not required to open their books to the public. My district’s books are open to everybody in the community. Our treasurer has been receiving awards for 30 years now for the high quality of our fiscal accountability.
I’m very proud of that because the buck stops with us on the school board, right? We can’t go to the grocery store without hearing from our neighbors about how much the real estate taxes cost. I have to remind them that I pay those too.
Lathardus Goggins:
As a board member, what does that mean for you in terms of what your role is, given all these changes, given this environment?
Reno Contipelli:
It just adds to the things you have to know as a board member. So, I’ll give you an example that we saw in 2000. Nobody saw No Child Left Behind coming around at the Ohio School Board Association.
I was a board member at the time. We were giving classes and updating superintendents. School board members were saying, ‘This is what you have to know, and this is what you have to do.’
One of the things we do at the Ohio School Boards Association is help board members with that policy and that direction, but it’s a huge learning curve to be able to do that.
Then, [No Child Left Behind] went away, and you get the next thing that comes down from the state or the federal government. You have to learn all that over again.
On July 1, there’s going to be a new budget in Ohio. Board members are going to have to learn what’s in that 5,000-page document.
What new policies am I going to have to implement in my school district by August or September? Then, how am I going to get training so everybody’s on the same page? What do they want public education to do? And that goes back to the eroding local tax base and local voting so that there’s more and more pressure on board members.
When you’re a board member, you, along with the other board members, are responsible for the governance of the district. You have to know all that stuff. And you’re really, in a sense, responsible for two people — the superintendent and the treasurer because they’re running your district. Board members have to do evaluations on them. They have to set the goals for the district. They have to set strategic planning. Every time something new comes down the road, you have to just sit in a room and revamp all that.
Malia Lewis:
The State of Ohio has a pretty good track record of changing tests on a regular basis. So, the complaint is always, ‘Oh, you’re teaching for the test.’
It’s like, well, ‘You are measuring the test.’ What gets measured is what people care about because that’s what makes the front page of the [Plain Dealer] every year. Where is your ranking compared to everybody else? We are constantly dealing with whiplash because things change constantly, and we need to be on top of that.
I think that part of the result of a lot of the things that have happened in Columbus that affect local school boards is that we have become, by force, better advocates. We have to be better representatives of our community because we were elected by our community for our children.
So, I think there’s a greater focus on advocacy and pushing back against the changes in legislation because otherwise we do lose that local control. The school board is the most local thing you can do. It’s your neighbors’ money and your neighbors’ children.
By Ohio Revised Code, we have three jobs to do: hire and fire the superintendent, hire and fire the treasurer, and discuss and pass the budget. Oh, four things, and set policy. That policy piece is also where we’re constantly being hampered and redirected by the state because new policy comes out at the state level.
It’s now in the Ohio Revised Code that we have to do X, Y and Z, so now we have to come up with a policy that meets the requirements of the Ohio Revised Code but still fulfills the needs of our community.
Ana Chapman:
Advocacy is what I was going to say as well. In the 12 years that I’ve served, the last probably five or six is when I’ve had to do a lot more homework, not just to attend board meetings, but in between on a regular basis because there’s so much happening, and it’s happening very quickly.
Somebody might stop you at the grocery store and ask you a question, and you have to know the answer to it. It’s hard, and that person might not agree with you. You know you’re telling them what’s going on and why you’re doing it. They might not agree with you. It’s a lot different now than it used to be.
Also, public participation in school board meetings has changed a lot over the last five or six years as well. You could go a stretch of months, maybe even a year, with nobody ever coming to participate in your meeting by saying anything, and then all of a sudden you’ll have 20 people who want to speak about all different topics and calling you names and all sorts of things.
Lathardus Goggins:
If there are 5,000 pages to learn [of the new state budget] — is there a standardized day of training? Is there some type of requirement that now this thing is passed, you have to know it?
Reno Contipelli:
That’s what we do at the Ohio School BoardS. People down in Columbus, through the Ohio School Boards Association, will start putting that information out to board members. We’ll start having workshops and seminars. Then, board members will go to those things, learn, ask questions and, then superintendents have their informational organizations as well. They’ll go through the same process. Treasurers have their own too.
Lathardus Goggins:
But that’s if you’re a member?
Reno Contipelli:
Ninety-five to 99% of the school boards are members of the Ohio School Boards Association. The ones that aren’t members are around the Cincinnati area, and there’s probably other organizations that help with that. But that’s what we do for all public schools.
Lathardus Goggins:
As a community advocate, as a concerned citizen, what are the types of questions that I need to ask school board candidates? Why are you running? What do you plan to achieve?
Reno Contipelli:
The board members really have to get along and become a team. Not everybody’s going to get what they want. You have to come to a consensus because you’re doing what’s best for kids, and you don’t micromanage a school. You hire people who run the school. You have to step back and let other people run the school. You just give them the goals and the guidance to do that. So that’s the first question I’d ask.
Where do you see this school in 1-3-5 years, if you get on the board? How much do they know about the state and federal issues to make good decisions? Are they willing to learn those issues? Because you can’t know everything. When I got elected, I was so weak on finances. So, I had to learn that part of the school board game. I knew the curriculum.
Lathardus Goggins:
There are people who are running to get on school boards who have an agenda or, in a lot of cases, that agenda is part of a national playbook. They’re often submitting policies that they have not even written or read themselves. You may have a group of folks who are committed and believe in education, believe in public education, and you have someone, one or two, who’s on the board who are clearly there for that personal agenda. How do you deal with that?
Ana Chapman:
I think the public needs to do a little bit of homework themselves about candidates and about what school boards can and cannot do. For example, it is a common thing where somebody wants to get on the board to have someone fired, and it doesn’t work that way.
The board doesn’t choose who gets fired or who gets hired, other than the treasurer and the superintendent. That’s it. Everything else has its own process. These are all people who are unionized. There’s due process in everything that has to be followed. You can’t just get on the board and say, ‘I want this person fired.’
So, if someone is telling you that’s why they’re running, they have no idea what their role is.
Most board members are not teachers, but if they have no idea whatsoever that the state decides what the curriculum is, not the local school district, and things like that. A lot of things are out of the board members’ control.
It’s important to find out before you consider voting for someone, what school members do, and then listen to their responses when there’s a candidate night. The Ohio School Boards Association website can give you all that information.
Lathardus Goggins:
What do you do on the board?
Malia Lewis:
Once you’re elected as a board member, the first thing you do that first year is read everything. You have to learn all the collective bargaining agreements, however many unions your district has.
So at least you’ve got teachers, you’ve got certificated and classified contracts at a minimum, that’s two contracts.
Policy. You need to have a handle on your basic current policy, because how can you decide what needs to be changed or improved? If you don’t know what you’ve got, what are we operating under?
You need to have an understanding of other things, like the student code of conduct and the employee code of conduct because, when there is an issue involving an employee, for example, the superintendent will make a recommendation to the board for termination or for whatever the punishment should be for some egregious behavior. As a board member, you can’t walk into that meeting without having any idea of what the normal operating procedures are for your district.
You said something about the curriculum that gave me pause. The state sets the standards, but the district and the board vote on which curriculum to adopt, which, in theory, will meet those standards. There is actually some local control around the curriculum because we have a six-year rolling process for looking at our curriculum for each of the four core courses so that we can update things, make them more relevant to our student body, stuff like that.
Lathardus Goggins:
If you had to boil it down to a set of three skills that are absolute in terms of being on a school board, what would they be?
Reno Contipelli:
I would say, one, come prepared. A lot of reading and asking questions. Build relationships with your administrators, your teachers, your staff, your community. That is really your job as a board member. You are the eyes and ears of the district to tell the superintendent what is going on.
Ana Chapman:
Be a good communicator, but also be a good listener. Not everybody can do both or do them well. It’s important that you’re able to share your concerns and also that you’re able to listen to other people when their point of view is different from yours.
Malia Lewis:
Not reacting quickly is important because parents will come to you as a board member because there’s a crisis, and that means that they’re at a heightened emotional level. It’s important not to overreact or not to react quickly. I serve as a go-between. I don’t know the answer, but I can put you in touch with the person who can help you.
Teachers will sometimes come to a board member about something because they know me or they live in the community. I ask them if they’ve talked to their building administrator first to see what’s going on. Making sure that you are able to work with everybody because it’s important not to burn any bridges.
Lathardus Goggins:
I was a bit surprised that none of y’all mentioned finance.
Reno Contipelli:
That’s part of the first thing I said, doing your homework. You’ll get an agenda, and you should know what’s on the agenda for every [meeting], but that’s part of that.
Ana Chapman:
We don’t have any individual power. So, finance is also not my forte, but it is one of the other school board member’s [strengths]. I’m stronger with the curriculum. Everybody brings different strengths, and you work on it together. We’re not physically creating the budget. The budget is created by the treasurer and the administrative team.
Lathardus Goggins:
But you gotta be able to read it.
Ana Chapman:
Absolutely. And ask questions.
Lathardus Goggins:
If I’m interested in becoming a school board member, are there resources that would help me learn some of the things that you’re talking about?
Reno Contipelli:
That’s what we do at the Ohio School Boards Association. Actually, we’ll have a workshop for new people … this summer. We’ll explain to them what you get yourself into, how to run a campaign, the campaign finance law, so you don’t get in trouble. Then, they’ll answer questions on ‘What is your role as a board member?’
Malia Lewis:
The other place to go for that sort of information is your county board of elections. They are incredibly helpful. They will hold workshops on campaign finance law, which has nothing to do with being a school board member. Being an effective campaigner has, there’s no overlap between that and being an effective school board member, except for the communication gap.
There are people who are happy to help you get started on a campaign. You can also talk to the current members of the school board. Meet with the superintendent. Meet with the treasurer and learn about what the main priorities of your district are to see if it’s something that you can align with, because not every school district is the same.
Lathardus Goggins:
There are these state, federal mandates or policies or political winds that blow. One of which is, there’s a provision in the current state budget that starts to require school board candidates to declare a party. But in so many ways, you kind of know where people are anyway because of some of the stuff their agenda is coming through.
Ana Chapman:
If you’re running for a public school board, you should support public education. You should not be supporting public school vouchers that are taking money away from your kids. That’s not political.
Unless you want to be on the board to be part of the problem, which I guess some people roll that way, but I want to be a part of something that I can help and support.
[Political parties should not be on the ballot for school board candidates] because there will be people who just check who they want because of their party, and that might not necessarily be the best person for the job.
Lathardus Goggins:
As a school board member and some of the folks here interested in getting onto the school board, how do you address some of those issues that are the reality of our history in this society and certain student populations who have been underserved, overlooked or otherwise not always given the best?
Ana Chapman:
It’s very difficult right now because of a lot of the restrictions that our state legislature is trying to put on what school boards can and cannot do and what can and cannot be said.
Malia Lewis:
Cleveland Heights-University Heights was the first school district in Northeast Ohio to pass an equity policy in 2016, before I was on the board. We look at all of our major decisions through an equity lens.
Equity and equality are two different words with two different meanings. A child who comes to kindergarten for the first time, having been taken to the Children’s Museum and the zoo and the park and spending summers playing with their friends and all of those sorts of things, has a leg up on a child who hasn’t had those experiences by the age of five. The child who didn’t have those experiences needs extra help in order to be able to progress through the education system.
Those inequities are things that we address head on, and we talk about where we fall short. Historically, African American children have been deprived of education of the same caliber as white children. Historically, and still to this day, children with special needs have been deprived of the caliber of education that typically developing children get. Historically in this country, rural children are deprived of the quality of education that children in a big city get. [That includes] access to resources, experiences outside the classroom, etc.
Poverty is the biggest driver of inequity. We have to look at that head on and name it and figure out ways to address it and try to improve. The goal is always to improve outcomes.
Now, outcomes are defined for us by the state as test scores, right? I define outcomes in a variety of different ways. Test scores are nice, but let’s talk about graduation rates. Let’s talk about the amount of money that our seniors are offered in college scholarships.
What matters gets measured. What’s measured matters. Be very careful what you’re actually measuring because that’s a reflection of your community’s values.
Many of our students wouldn’t have the opportunity to go to college without those scholarship offers or without the ability to get a number of college credits done for free.
You mentioned a while ago public education as a stepping stone for upward mobility. That’s what we do, that’s what we work on.
If your parents didn’t go to college, you have no idea what the expectations are. And that’s terrifying. And the potential for failure is much higher and it can be much more devastating. So that’s why we focus so much on trying to provide access to higher education for those of our kids who want it and who have the ability.
A kid who gets an associate’s degree at the age of17 — hats off.
Ana Chapman:
But the government is trying to tie our hands on creating programs that would help with the inequities.
Lathardus Goggins:
Are there places that provide training, are there networks in which a board or district that is doing this type of equity work, that other districts can learn what’s going on and begin to replicate it?
Reno Contipelli:
When you ask that question, what are three things you gotta do? Like I said, build relationships. These two [referring to Lewis and Chapman] have built relationships. Board members out there have built relationships. I give school board members a lot of credit because they’ve been dealt a bad hand for decades.
The board member is triage. Here’s the most critical thing in my district I have to do. What am I going to give up to solve this problem? One of the things that board members, good board members, do through networking is they find best practices in other districts, so they don’t have to reinvent the wheel.
One of the things that we do at the Ohio School Boards Association, through our training and capital conference, is board members get to talk to one another. They’re making tough decisions because you have this core curriculum you have to teach that costs money and you add in the special education cost. So now what gets cut out of this — bussing, co-curricular activities, the fun things you want to do with kids, you can’t afford it anymore.
That’s where the state is failing to fund schools because every budget that comes out, it’s less and less money for the schools. Schools either have to go to the residents to pass the tax levies — if those don’t pass, you’re taking programming away from kids.
That’s where you start to get this domino effect of going back to your question on why aren’t kids achieving or why aren’t kids learning. The resources aren’t there.
Lathardus Goggins:
I’m going to give you a little push back because there are times when the resources are there and choices are being made about not that type of child, right? So, it’s not just an issue of, if I had resources, they would get it too. But I understand the spirit of what you’re saying and understand that there’s no easy answer.
Ana Chapman:
A lot of that is out of the board members’ realm. We know what’s going on, to a certain extent, with what we’re told, and if we don’t know that kind of thing is happening, then we can’t act on it because we’re not in the classroom every day, we don’t know every single child and every child’s needs.
Lathardus Goggins:
We have a general understanding that education has been changing for quite some time, but COVID is a particular event that brought to light some of the challenges of education.
The idea that education exists within four walls, we had to become more agile. How do you communicate with the community what education needs to look like, even though sometimes you’re spending so much time trying to triage?
Reno Contipelli:
No one saw COVID coming. So boards had to adapt their budgets, had to adapt their policies, had to adapt everything. Boards had to adapt their five-year forecasts. The good news was that we adapted, and we educated kids. May not be great, education was on Zoom, but we adapted to it.
You almost need an individual academic plan for every kid. The problem is you don’t have the money or the resources, so they all get lumped in a classroom.
I think what’s going to happen is that more and more kids are going to come to school needing accommodations. That means they’re going to need money, and you’re going to need resources and more staff. The structure is not there from the state and the federal government.
Ana Chapman:
Kids are coming to school today to be entertained. They’re not coming to school to learn because they spent so much time as elementary kids, especially at home, on their devices. They’re used to instant gratification on their devices, and that’s not how school works.
It’s difficult for educators. As board members, we can’t tell teachers how to teach. That’s not our role. We have to trust that the superintendent is doing their job in managing their staff, and that what is being taught is up to every individual teacher and how they’re going to be delivering their instruction based on who the kids in their class are.
Malia Lewis:
I think there is an inherent disconnect between the methodology of teaching and the fact that every kid already has a phone in their pocket, and they have access to the answer to every question. How we teach and why we teach the way we do are connected to a very old system, right? They’re going to be tested on it.
Our purpose used to be to teach kids things that they needed to know in order to be successful.
As school board members, we only have so much latitude. In my district, we just approved a new curriculum for preschool. So one of the things that mattered the most to us, besides the fact that it had to hit the standards required by the State of Ohio, is that this particular curriculum is play-based. It’s hands on. It’s all about the kids running around and playing with stuff.
We can encourage in a budgeting process a greater emphasis on hands-on learning, working in teams. What do employers want? They want people who are comfortable dealing with new situations, comfortable working with other people, and can get stuff done on deadline.
If you listen to the Ohio Department of Education and Workforce or Ohio Senator Jerry Cirino [who sponsored SB1], our only job is to create effective workers who will provide a profit for their employers.
If I use that framework, then let’s make sure that our kids graduate able to work together with people who are different from themselves, who have different backgrounds and different life experiences, find common ground, figure out how to solve the problem, pull out their phones and use Google when appropriate and then implement it.
Lathardus Goggins:
Is there a professional standard for a school board member?
Reno Contipelli:
The answer is yes. You have two up here right now. You have some in the audience. When they go out and speak, they’re speaking for themselves. They don’t speak for the whole board. It’s usually the board president or the superintendent.
Boardrooms have to be careful. I’m an elected official. Here’s my opinion. Here’s what I think. It doesn’t mean the board thinks that way. So, I said that’s part of this professional standard. The other thing is that you have to watch the social media stuff because when you’re posting something, maybe as a mother or father, you’re not posting something as the board president or the board member.
Lathardus Goggins:
So as a candidate or someone interested, should I come to one of the Ohio School Boards Association sessions to learn about the professional standards?
Reno Contipelli:
Yes. We would help them. We would answer their questions.
Malia Lewis:
Our district pays for new school board members to attend seminars held by the Ohio School Boards Association; … I can’t remember what it’s called, but there’s School Board 101, there’s Finance 101, there’s some introductory half-day events that are useful as a new board member, and If you were a candidate who wanted to be extra prepared, [attending] would put you in a very good position to hit the ground running if you were elected.
Ana Chapman:
Even as experienced board members, it’s important to always be attending training because you always learn something new. If someone is not open to doing training, I think that will cause a strain among the board.
Malia Lewis:
We have two national associations for school board members. I attend specific conferences regularly because that’s how I know I’m going to go knock heads with people whose districts are similar to mine but may not be in Ohio. It’s incredibly helpful to talk to people over coffee about how we address certain issues.
Lathardus Goggins:
What are some other things that can be done to show the value of education beyond just the test scores and participation rates?
Malia Lewis:
Participation rates. The hook for every kid is different. The more participation you have, the larger percentage of your students are involved in something outside of the classroom, the more engaged they are and everything else. If you can get them in the building, they’ll learn Pythagoras by accident.
As board members, we have to provide the resources to have these extra activities that might not be part of your classrooms. We have to make sure that there’s many different activities available, and that’s hard because everything comes down to money.
Our fight is always around not excluding kids by accident. If you have to pay 50 bucks for your uniform, who’s not going to come and play, right? Participation fees are important if you don’t have the money to pay for whatever the thing is. Participation fees are also a barrier, and you have to be very upfront about that.
So that’s where PTAs and booster clubs and all these things become incredibly important.
You have to know your community. It’s a constant dialogue between the school board and the community of what we care about and what we’re willing to put money behind.
Lathardus Goggins:
Lastly, what would be the most important thing the community should know about what school boards do, and what is your hope? What do you see as a solution?
Reno Contipelli:
I would say, if your heart’s in the right place, run. We’ll provide you the training and the guidance that you need on that.
Ana Chapman:
I would say, if you’re thinking about it, then you should definitely do it. It’s a great experience. You learn a lot about yourself. You also have to be open to learning, to listening, being OK with being wrong, or being the minority in a group, but you have to stand with your principles and speak up for what you feel is right.
When you’re looking at other candidates to vote for, if someone comes off as they know everything, I won’t vote for that person because no one knows everything. No one is an expert at everything.
If you hear someone talking about something very specific that they want to do once they get on the board, I would question that because they probably can’t do that, and they would need the support of at least two other people to be able to do something.
Also, once you get elected as a board member, it’s very important to be open to the community and make yourself available to them. Whenever you get an email, make sure that you’re responding, even if you can’t help them. They feel heard. Take time to set up times at the local library for office hours where people just come and talk to you.
Malia Lewis:
I agree with both of you. The most important thing we do on the school board is set policy, and that’s connected to hiring the right treasurer, hiring the right superintendent, and you’re looking for people who are the right fit for your community, for your students, and sometimes you may not get it right.
Governance is about keeping the big picture in mind and not getting sucked into the details — everybody wants to talk to you about whatever their detail is. So you’ve got to make sure that you redirect them to the right people for that.
