Accross the board

How do you make an effective case in the state Capitol?

Asked of school board members who took part in CSBA’s 2007 Legislative Action Conference in Sacramento.

Celia Jaffe
School board member
Huntington Beach City School District

This was my first time at both Delegate Assembly and the Legislative Action Conference. Both were very valuable experiences. (I have visited legislators before on behalf of PTA.)
I met (in a group) with a staffer from Sen. Tom Harman’s office and with Assembly member Jim Silva and a member of his staff. Whether a visit is “successful” depends on your definition of the word. Your success might be in debunking a myth, as when we corrected Sen. Harman’s staffer on her comment that California’s per-student amount is among the highest in the country. Or success might be in finding the common ground that you can and emphasizing it.
During these visits, the basic budget message of no new programs when there isn’t complete funding for the old ones was an easy sell to our conservative legislators.

Our meetings were effective because we were constituents who could emphasize common ties in the community and because we were well prepared by CSBA to present a few simply explained positions with complete written information to leave behind.
I felt very positive about the whole experience.

Linda Pavletich
CSBA director Region 12
Rio Bravo-Greeley Union Elementary School District

I’ve made many visits to legislators over the years, and I think sometimes I’ve been pegged as “that Republican school board member who wants to spend money.” That’s not true; I’m not an advocate of big spending. But schools desperately need adequate funding, and I’m not afraid to say that. To be an effective advocate, it’s important to be prepared—even if it means writing down your main points in advance. Having a professional demeanor is also crucial. I consistently remind the delegates in my region that when we visit lawmakers’ offices during Legislative Action, we are speaking for the association as a whole and representing the association’s consensus on these issues. Individual districts and county offices with concerns specific to their respective local communities need to take up those concerns at another time. It’s vital that we present a united front at Legislative Action.

Susan Markarian
CSBA director Region 10
Pacific Union Elementary School District

The most effective visits seem to be when you can meet with the members themselves. This year I was part of a group of veteran school board members. Both lawmakers we met with had some misconceptions about Assembly Bill 1403 [that would give county superintendents in eight Fresno-area counties the authority to take control of academic programs in local districts]. Hopefully we were able to set them straight about what the bill would and wouldn’t do for districts. It felt good to have 70 to 75 combined years of experience behind us. It’s important that we convince legislators that we are doing the job we were elected to do, and that they see school board members as the front line leaders in education.
We need to sell ourselves and our message when we are lobbying. We lobbied very forcefully last year against the Los Angeles mayoral takeover bill. I think people remember that. I want them to know that we are prepared to react just as strongly this year to any legislation we believe threatens public schools.

Rene Aguilera
School board member
Roseville City School District

It worked well this year for us to divide up the issues we wanted to discuss. Each person had a handle on one issue and when that person had finished, the rest of the group could add comments. We presented local examples. When we talked about the need to tweak the No Child Left Behind Act, I described how Roseville High failed to make adequate yearly progress because four students in a specific subgroup didn’t show up on test day. Now Roseville High is a program improvement school. Providing local examples made a difference. In a broader sense, we tried to remind the legislators we met with that we both represent local citizens, and that we need to work together. We asked for their help, but we also asked how we could help them.