Delegates OK updated Policy Platform
Published: June 1, 2013
CSBA’s Delegate Assembly invested much of its two-day meeting last month in the Policy Platform that guides all of the association’s work—but it was nothing compared to the time and effort that went into a committee’s painstaking review of the document.
The roughly 300-member Assembly capped all that hard work with a unanimous vote accepting the committee’s proposed version of the Platform. The floor votes were cast without discussion, but only after the delegates had met in groups of roughly two dozen each to review and discuss the new version in an afternoon of breakout sessions a day earlier. Following a final delegate input process over the summer, informed by feedback from the breakouts, the committee will re-present its work for adoption when the Delegate Assembly meets again in San Diego Dec. 4-5.
“We need a better process. We needed a better document,” Jill Wynns, the Policy Platform Review Committee chair, reminded the delegates. For more than two decades, the Platform has consumed much of the Assembly’s time when it came up for revision every two years.
The previous platform was organized into eight Critical Issue areas: Conditions of Children; Curriculum and Instruction; Diversity of Students; Facilities; Funding and Finance; Governance and Structure; Professional Standards; Program and Fiscal Accountability. Each was introduced with a narrative summary of the issue and related ideals, followed by numbered statements of support for specific association positions—343 in all.
The new draft seeks to faithfully capture the larger principles in four overarching “policy pillars”:
- Strengthen local governance
- Secure fair funding
- Improve conditions of children
- Ensure achievement for all
All but five of the 343 association positions are retained; those that were dropped were deemed already achieved, obsolete, redundant or beyond CSBA’s mission—which remains, as stated in the new document:
“Boards of education are entrusted by their diverse communities to ensure that a high-quality education is provided to each student. CSBA promotes success for all students by defining and driving the public education agenda and strengthening school board governance at the district and county levels.”
Wynns, who had encouraged the Delegate Assembly to undertake the comprehensive assessment of the Platform when she became CSBA’s president in 2011, chaired the nine-member committee composed of Delegate Assembly members.
They met in person five times and put in countless additional hours on phone calls and emails. Their work distilled the Policy Platform to its essence, condensing it from around 14,600 words to just 4,600.
The goal was “a higher level of organization” of the Policy Platform that would “make it shorter, make it more accessible to us and the external audiences we work with,” Wynns explained to the delegates. Those external audiences include foundations that may be interested in partnering with the association and/or underwriting some of its work, as well as elected officials at the national, state and local level—whose own work can complement or complicate that of CSBA and local school boards.
The new draft “reinvigorates the organization,” said Angelo Williams, Ed.D., CSBA’s assistant executive director for Policy and Programs, whose department staffed the committee. The Policy Platform guides his department’s work and all of CSBA’s advocacy and member services, with the ultimate goal of enhancing school governance throughout California and beyond.