AEC: Governance teams equipped for year ahead
Guidance offered on key education issues
Published: January 1, 2014
The atmosphere was electric at CSBA’s 2013 Annual Education Conference and Trade Show in San Diego last month, where an impressive 4,500 attendees gathered to empower themselves with the governance tools and leadership skills they’ll need to prepare for what promises to be a momentous year ahead.
Although CSBA’s premier education and training event has always attracted substantial audiences, it’s not difficult to see why the 2013 conference was an especially big draw and why it’s particularly important that school board members take advantage of such opportunities to enhance their expertise in leadership and governance.
Many of the more than 200 scheduled speakers at 135 workshops focused on helping governance teams effectively implement California’s new Local Control Funding Formula and continue the transition to the new Common Core State Standards. Those standards and related computerized assessments that LEAs will field test in spring 2014 merited a special conference strand this year, with many presentations oriented to the topic; also new was a strand on school safety, coming shortly before the one-year anniversary of the horrific shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut. Other conference strands focused on community partnerships, engagement and advocacy; student achievement; leadership through governance; the digital age; and funding, finance and facilities.
Welcome—but modest—funding increases
School finance and budgets have always been key issues. But next year, for the first time since the Great Recession, most local educational agencies will see modest increases in their respective bottom lines. Instead of struggling to preserve essential student services in the face of huge budget cuts, conference-goers were networking with colleagues and hearing suggestions from policy experts about how to most effectively invest funds in new or expanded programs for disadvantaged students—a welcome, if somewhat daunting, task.
The money comes with new flexibility under LCFF, but also with regulatory requirements that the State Board of Education still must establish (see related story). Nearly a dozen AEC workshops offered insights and assistance in working with LCFF’s formula, which is designed to raise the achievement of historically at-risk student subgroups, and for developing the stakeholder engagement strategies and education programs that governance teams—working in close collaboration with local stakeholders—determine will best meet those needs.
“How school boards are defined in the near term is going to be based on what you do or you do not do” on LCFF, CSBA Executive Director & CEO Vernon M. Billy said at the State of the State panel discussion that closed the conference (see related story).
Flooring it
Jam packed as it was, the conference schedule did allow time for attendees to explore goods and services promoted by more than 200 exhibitors on the trade show floor. The trade show was anchored once again by the CSBA Pavilion and Learning Center, where association staff introduced the popular and newly redesigned Agenda Online paperless meeting program and the respected Gamut sample policy and manual maintenance service. Staff and faculty were also on hand at the Pavilion to discuss innovations and improvements in CSBA’s respected Masters in Governance curriculum—the centerpiece of a host of educational programs that make up the association’s new Governance U.
An impressive 1,313 registrants took advantage of Engage AEC, the online platform that allowed attendees to personalize their conference schedules and connect with others before, during and after the 2½ days of AEC and the pre-conference sessions that preceded it. Archived conference handouts, PowerPoint slides and other materials are available through Engage AEC and on the conference website.
Experts aplenty
Conference-goers had opportunities to hear from and interact with a veritable who’s who of educational policy and program experts. The list includes speakers at various conference meetings and meal functions and the many educational policy experts who participated in workshops, clinics, table talks and other conference activities.
Among these notables: equity and diversity expert Glenn Singleton, author of “Courageous Conversations About Race: A Field Guide for Achieving Equity in Schools”; State Board of Education members Carl Cohn and, separately, Sue Burr; State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson and his predecessor, Jack O’Connell; Rick Simpson, chief education adviser to state Assembly Speaker John Pérez; Linda Darling-Hammond, the Stanford University education professor who chairs the state’s Commission on Teacher Credentialing; Joel Montero, CEO of California’s Fiscal Crisis and Management Assistance Team; and school bond/parcel tax expert and political consultant Larry Tramutola.
#exhausted
Embedded within the seven conference strands were sessions on a number of key issues including policy, conditions of children, non-fiscal aspects of governance and Linked Learning, a special CSBA priority this year that stresses career and college readiness. CSBA Policy and Programs Officer Julie Maxwell-Jolly, Ph.D., moderated a panel on the topic at the Urban School Districts Luncheon, when participants and featured speakers had a chance to network and discuss how they might partner to enhance public education within their districts. Read more about that and several other AEC events on the CSBA blog (http://blog.csba.org).
On CSBA’s Facebook page and Twitter feed, governance team members made it clear that they had made the most of their conference experience: “Thanks #csbaaec for a great conference! Looking forward to next year,” tweeted one attendee. “#exhausted.”