Delegate Assembly adds its support, counsel to CSBA’s ‘road to renewal’
Published: January 1, 2011
CSBA’s Delegate Assembly added to the association’s strides toward greater openness and shared decision making during two days of discussions, deliberations and action in San Francisco last month.
Delegates welcomed an independent review of CSBA’s governance and fiscal operations and made recommendations for related changes. The Assembly, whose 270-plus members are chosen by school trustees in 21 regions around the state, also elected officers for the coming year (see related story) and updated CSBA’s Policy Platform to guide policy and political leadership activities.
Davis W. Campbell, CSBA’s former executive director who temporarily returned to the post on an interim, unpaid basis late last summer, reported to the delegates on changes undertaken since then. Campbell was succeeded as interim executive director by Jeff Vaca, CSBA’s chief deputy executive director, last fall, but Campbell continues to assist and advise the association.
Campbell said the Board of Directors, meeting the day before the Delegate Assembly convened, finalized its criteria for a new, permanent executive director and selected a consulting firm to lead the search. Campbell also noted that CSBA has posted voluminous financial accountability documents on its website, begun a review of its compensation policies, and hired an interim chief fiscal officer. In addition, he noted the mid-November release of the Governance and Fiscal Review conducted by Joel M. Montero, chief executive officer of the Fiscal Crisis and Management Assistance Team, the independent state agency that advises local educational agencies, and Ken Hall, founder of the respected School Services of California consulting firm who is now with the University of Southern California’s Rossier School of Education.
“CSBA will be a changed but stronger organization” because of all these efforts, Campbell assured the delegates.
It was a message repeated by speaker after speaker at the Delegate Assembly, including President Frank Pugh. “I believe we are well on the road to renewal,” Pugh told the delegates, urging them to participate “because you are CSBA.”
“We kept providing the programs and services that you need, and we kept advocating at the state level … on your behalf,” Pugh said. Those efforts include the association’s governance, financial and policy services, state and federal advocacy for public schools, and legal action such as Robles-Wong v. California, the lawsuit filed by a CSBA-led coalition that seeks to tie California’s system of financing its public schools with the state’s constitutional obligations to provide an education and to align it with the standards the state has established (see related story).
“The good work of our association continues,” Pugh said.
Delegates act
Delegates soon acted to put their stamp on the association, meeting in groups of 25 or so to discuss their vision of the future of CSBA—now in its 80th year of representing the interests of school districts, county offices of education and the state’s schoolchildren in Sacramento and Washington, D.C., and of offering related professional development and services. Topics included CSBA’s bylaws and elections, and the proper roles of the Delegate Assembly, the Board of Directors and CSBA’s various committees.
The exercise consumed much of the Assembly’s meeting, yielding dozens of recommendations. Several broad themes for action emerged, including:
- providing a larger role for delegates in adopting CSBA policy, particularly as developments occur between the two regular Delegate Assembly meetings that occur each year
- more rapid dissemination of enhanced advocacy tools for use at the local level
- more opportunity for delegates to confer, both in small groups at the Assembly’s regular meetings and perhaps in regional meetings
CSBA’s Board Development Committee will review the extensive input provided; further input and action, both on the suggested strategies and on the strategic objectives at their core, is likely when the Delegate Assembly meets again in May.
The Delegate Assembly also adopted more than three dozen changes to CSBA’s Policy Platform, the document that guides the association’s actions in advocating for schools and children in the state and national capitals. Many were updates or refinements of current positions; others were new positions proposed to reflect changing conditions or new considerations.
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