NewsroomThe latest CSBA news, blog posts, publications, research and resources for members and the news media

A conversation with ... CSBA Executive Director Vernon M. Billy 

Vernon M. Billy, who became executive director of the California School Boards Association in May, brings nearly two decades of experience in both public education advocacy and the business arena to his work. He’s the former owner/partner of the Sacramento-based K Street Consulting education policy and advocacy firm and a former vice president of School Innovations & Advocacy Inc.

Billy also has extensive public education experience in the legislative and political arenas, having served as governmental relations director for the San Francisco Unified School District and as the chief contract lobbyist for a number of other districts in the state. He’s also very familiar with CSBA, having served as a senior legislative advocate for the association in the mid-1990s, and he often collaborated with the association in his other work. A husband and the father of three children, Billy has also viewed public education from the personal perspective of a taxpayer and a parent.

That unique blend of experience serves the California State University, Sacramento, government/international relations alumnus well in his current post. As CSBA’s executive director, Billy is responsible for planning, organizing, directing and coordinating CSBA’s staff, programs and activities to ensure the association’s mission, vision, goals and objectives are met.

“It is a privilege to lead CSBA at a time when I know our members need the association’s services and support more than ever,” Billy said when his selection as executive director was announced April 5. “Within the next 90 days, I will work collaboratively with the board and staff to review the organization’s fiscal and governance structure in order to build on our current strengths and assure our members that we are operating in the most efficient manner possible.”

As those 90 days were drawing to a close, Billy sat down for this interview with California Schools.

In your first speech to CSBA’s Delegate Assembly last May, you offered “a vision for CSBA that can be explained in four words: ‘forward thinking, strategic positioning.’ ” Could you expand on that for our readers? Where do you hope to see CSBA positioned in the future, in comparison to where the organization stands today?

Essentially, I was trying to convey two things. One, we need to make sure we are addressing current organizational, policy and political issues in new, innovative ways that are beyond our traditional practices. And second, we need to ensure we are planning for the future based on current and foreseeable developments, while recognizing and leveraging strategic opportunities to strengthen the association. This is not necessarily an easy thing to do, but I feel it’s something we must do if we’re going to be even more effective as an association.

I think if we are forward thinking and strategically positioned, we will have increased our policy and political influence, we will be providing greater value to our members in terms of trainings and services, and we will have significantly changed our internal operations in a way that strengthens everything we do as an association.

As a legislative advocate for CSBA in the 1990s, you led our successful effort to help defeat the “95-5 Initiative,” which—based on flawed analyses of how much California’s public schools spend on administration—would have required 95 percent of school budgets to be spent “in the classroom.” Unfortunately, such misinformation continues to skew perceptions of public schools. Given your background in advocacy and communications, what can CSBA do to better educate the public about the work its schools do and the challenges they face?

We have to do a better job of communicating to the broader public. We do a pretty good job communicating to our members, but it is the larger public that votes on initiatives, it’s the larger public that elects state legislators that vote on the education budget and policies, and it’s the larger public that elects our members. Remember, the vast majority of Californians don’t have children in schools.

So, what can we do better to educate the public? Because we are not a large organization with lots of money, we need to be creative. For example, we must look at creating broad-based partnerships with universities and non-education organizations that can help spread our message.

Second, we can use technology and social media more efficiently. We’ve started doing vlogs—video blogs—and taking advantage of other social media like Twitter, which is great, but I want us to be able to be positioned to do more of this type of communication.

Third, we need to open up the policy work we do to a broader universe—so for example, connecting our policy work, and hence our story—with major universities around the state. It’s OK to have information sitting on your website, but in the technology-based world that we live in that drives public perception, we have to constantly be thinking of ways to reach an expanded audience.

Fourth, we can continue to help our members with the press at the local level to educate the public. The launch of our Key Communicators group and our new grassroots advocacy efforts are important first steps, but we’ll have to expand on these efforts if we are going to be more effective in our advocacy and communications efforts with the public.

You were also CSBA’s chief federal advocate. How do you assess U.S. education policy today?

Well, I think we have a ways to go. Things are still a little unsettled in D.C. with last year’s change in the House, and we are still waiting on the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, formerly known as No Child Left Behind. Having said that, I think the Obama administration and Congress have recognized the need to provide schools and districts with greater “flexibility” during these difficult financial times; that’s a good thing if it’s real flexibility and not the old carrot-and-stick of, “We’ll give you flexibility, but in order to get it, you must follow our top-down edicts.” Moving forward, I hope federal policymakers will recognize that their desire for “innovation” and improvement in our schools should be backed by research-based models, have adequate funding, and be available to all communities, not just those with the best grant writers. Overall, I think Washington needs to consider how they can support schools in rebuilding important programs that have been lost during the Great Recession and that will allow us to stay competitive in the global marketplace.

You went on to lead the San Francisco Unified School District’s governmental relations. How does your experience in a local district inform your work now that you’re back here at CSBA?

Yes I did, and it was a rewarding experience. But I was also a trusted member of the superintendent’s cabinet and was involved in many decisions that impacted the district’s facilities program, community relations and instructional programs. My work in SFUSD gave me a greater understanding of the real-world pressures boards and superintendents face. Districts end up serving at least four important constituents: the students, the parents, the politicians, and other government institutions, all within a system that is not always “rational.” Knowing this, and having been a participant in it, helps me keep perspective on how the things we do as an association should constantly be helping boards to manage these and other aspects of their work.

San Francisco is a large, urban, K–12 district, but in the private sector you’ve also worked as a consultant and advocate for districts of all sizes, demographics and grade ranges. What insights has your experience outside of CSBA given you into how the association serves California’s wide variety of districts and county offices of education?

Well, CSBA, like most associations, has a diverse membership and must be able to serve these segments of the membership while still serving the whole. Given this, CSBA has traditionally done a very respectable job of managing this balancing act, but we must continue to strive to achieve what some call “mass customization” if we are going to meet the changing needs of our members, who are also changing in age, ethnicity and background. I go back to my earlier comments about ensuring that we continue to provide “value” to our members. What is considered of value is different from district to district as communities change, so we must ensure we are keeping up with this change.

California’s students are the nation’s most diverse. How is the state doing in preparing all its students for success?

The state is not doing as a good of a job as any of us would like: $18 billion in cuts, the defunding of important state programs such as the arts, and the virtual elimination of state funding to support technology and instructional materials have set us back. This is all reflective of why CSBA filed its Robles-Wong lawsuit versus the state. Through our lawsuit, we hope that the final outcome will result in the state adequately preparing our students for success regardless of which path they choose, whether it be higher education or a career.

Getting back to your background in the private sector—which is more extensive than may be typical in public education and the nonprofit world—what insights did you gain from working in private enterprise that help you lead a nonprofit organization in the service of public institutions?

Well, I think the first thing is that you’ve got to focus on understanding what your consumers/constituents—in this case, school boards—know they want, and try and provide it to them, and then provide them with important services or products that they may not know they need or want, but that can help them transform the work they do.

I think from an organizational standpoint, one of the most important things is to ensure you have a solid budget and have plans on how to build that budget, so you can reinvest back into your members/constituents, which leads to better value for the members and a stronger financial picture for the organization, and creates other expanded opportunities for the organization.

And lastly—but not necessarily the last thing to do—we’ve got to create professional development opportunities for our staff, provide leadership opportunities and identify “talent” that can help lead the organization.

Military experience is also rare in the education world, but you spent four years in the U.S. Air Force. First, thank you for your service.

Thank you.

Second, how does that experience influence you in your work today?

It’s a big part of me in the sense that I still have that “get it done” attitude and a strong belief that in order for an organization to be effective its staff or team needs training, has to be moving as one in a clearly defined direction, and needs effective leaders at all levels in order to be successful.

CSBA has gone through considerable soul-searching in the past year, including commissioning an independent Governance and Fiscal Accountability Review and reaching out to our members for information on their concerns and priorities for the association. What’s your assessment of where we are today?

Well, I think we’ve made progress on multiple levels, but unfortunately, we will probably be spending at least another 12 months trying to put to rest a number of the issues that arose last summer. Recognizing that there is still work required to improve the internal workings of the association is important for the membership to know, because it means we’ll have to continue to redirect staff to help try and resolve some of these issues while continually trying to forge a new path. Having said all that, I’m happy to say that there’s been clear progress in addressing a number of the items in the review in the sense that we continue to “check off” important recommendations, and then there’s the progress that we’ve made in strengthening other areas of our operations that were not necessarily a part of the report. Our Board Development Committee has been working feverishly to review and make recommendations regarding various issues raised in the report, and our interim chief financial officer has begun establishing important internal controls that complement the report’s findings and will bolster accountability throughout CSBA.

Brian Taylor ( btaylor@csba.org ) is the managing editor of California Schools.