Last Thursday-Saturday, I attended the annual conference put on by the California School Board Association. All of my colleagues on the Board, as well as Superintendent Mitrovich, attended the conference. It was great having us all there, and particularly in this time of a difficult financial situation, it was great to learn best practices from other districts and learn ways we can function better as a governing team. I could put together pages and pages of notes on what I learned about, but just to give you an idea, here are some of the sessions I attended:
- Financial Success by Performance-Based Budgeting
- Solar Powered Schools
- Board, Budgets, and Bargaining
- Creating a 21st Century Learning Environment
- The First Ammendment and Schools
- The Governance Team’s Role in High Achievement
- GASB 45: Post-Retirement Health Benefits
- Protocol that Maximizes Board Effectiveness
- Begin with the Brain
Obviously there was a shared theme throughout the whole conference regarding the current state financial crisis. There are some really brutal scenarios where many school districts will run out of money, so there was a lot of angst among attendees.
I’m more than happy to give folks details about some of the learnings if you want to contact me.
