‘CSBA is on the move!’
Delegate Assembly is briefed on new directions, services and initiatives
Published: June 1, 2013
CSBA’s Delegate Assembly worked through an issue-packed weekend at the first of its two meetings of 2013, approving a streamlined draft of the association’s Policy Platform (see related story) and hearing updates—and often offering counsel—on virtually every aspect of the association’s activities and member services.
“CSBA is on the move!” Executive Director Vernon M. Billy said at the outset of his address to the Assembly. New products, services and practices have been introduced to enhance the benefits of membership that governance team members have long relied on.
And with robust Governmental Relations and Policy and Programs advocates who are politically potent in the corridors of power—and in the courts, where CSBA’s Education Legal Alliance has prevailed on unfunded mandates, state benefit charters and other issues—Billy said, the association is poised to make a difference in the lives of children as never before.
“I’ve pushed our staff to think and do things differently for the greater good of the association,” Billy said in his speech on the second day of the May 18-19 meeting in Sacramento. CSBA needed to respond nimbly—and quickly—to changing circumstances, Billy said, because the opponents of public education and local governance “aren’t waiting for us to catch up.”
But none of that is possible, he acknowledged, without the support and continuing leadership of CSBA’s members. “We can only do this work with you at our side,” he said. “No, scratch that: with you in front, leading the way.”
Governance First, plus other issues
With representatives from all of CSBA’s 21 regions, the Delegate Assembly sets policy and direction for the association, and delegates serve as key links between CSBA’s leadership and local governance team members. Their work is informed by their own experience on school boards throughout the state, and by updates from the association’s leadership and senior staff.
Billy’s report, for example, was a key part of presentations on everything from CSBA’s new Governance First legislative agenda, which emphasizes the importance of local control and decision-making when it comes to public schools, to enhanced channels of communications from the association to the members—and among the members themselves, facilitated by a revamped website and the new members-only Engage online community. (See related story.)
Delegates also heard a discussion on the changing world of testing and accountability under the Common Core State Standards, asking questions and offering their own perspectives. Teri Burns, CSBA senior director for Policy and Programs—as well as a board member in the Natomas Unified School District—moderated the talk with panelists Paul Warren, a former California Department of Education testing expert who’s now with the Public Policy Institute of California, and Kimberly Rodriguez, principal consultant to the Assembly Appropriations Committee in the state Legislature.
Caucusing in early-morning meetings with their respective regional directors and networking with colleagues during rare moments of down time, delegates remained focused on the main business of the Assembly, moving carefully but efficiently through an ambitious agenda that included:
State budget: As the 2013-14 state budget debate entered its final weeks, CSBA Assistant Executive Director for Governmental Relations Dennis Meyers told the delegates that CSBA remained focused on two principles: full restoration of K-14 education funding levels that peaked in 2007-08 and, ultimately, securing per-pupil funding on par with the national average. The debate in Sacramento falls far short of those ambitious goals, but Gov. Jerry Brown’s Local Control Funding Formula “is likely to happen in the budget this year,” Meyers said, despite some legislators’ interest in running it through a more deliberative committee process than the June 15 deadline for budget action allows. However, Meyers added, details of controversial provisions to hold school districts accountable for targeting new funding to English learners, students from low-income families and foster youth may take longer to iron out.
Annual Education Conference and Trade Show: AEC Planning Committee Chair Heidi Gallegos announced the selection of General Session speakers for this year’s conference in San Diego Dec. 5-7: Jane McGonigal, director of game research and development at the Institute for the Future, and Yong Zhao, presidential chair and associate dean for global education in the College of Education at the University of Oregon.
CSBA membership: In a sign of improving economic times and recognition of CSBA’s valuable range of services, programs and support, CSBA can count 953 school districts, county offices of education and regional occupational centers/programs as members for 2012-13, said Senior Director for Membership Susan Swigart. That includes 22 LEAs that rejoined the association this year and were “welcomed back with open arms,” Swigart said. CSBA members serve 99.9 percent of all California’s public school students.