Board training - workshops

Customized board and leadership team training, facilitation, consultation and advice

A school board member holds the most important elected position in the country. Let OSBA help you do your best in service to the students of your district.

OSBA offers school board members the best and most up-to-date training in:

Roles and Responsibilities a series of three workshops:

1) The basic workshop will help attendees learn about the board’s governance role and its relationship with the superintendent to avoid common pitfalls. While focusing on best practices and boards’ legal roles and responsibilities found in state statute and board policy, this workshop will provide a guide for boards to be effective in governing the district. 

2) The intermediate workshop is focused on board culture: how the board does its work and how board members interact with one another. Board culture matters and effective boards understand why it is valuable to examine board culture through the results of the online board self-evaluation survey. In this workshop boards identify desired outcomes for the members’ interactions and develop a board operating agreement that is a living document to help boards continuously improve.

3) The advanced workshop is focused on the board’s leadership role to encourage system-wide change and improvement, specifically in student learning. The board explores how to put collaborative governance into practice and establish an expectation of its continuance. It is recommended that the board have completed both the basic and intermediate workshops before engaging in the advanced level workshop.

Assessment Literacy: Understand the array of achievement data and student assessments available and how they can drive decisions that improve student success and close achievement gaps for districts and charter schools.

Ethics: This workshop covers what board members need to know about Oregon's ethics laws, covering selected case studies, the “but for” test, and the consequences for failure to comply.

School Finance: We begin with an overview of the role of the board and budget committee in setting goals and guidelines for the budget process, and a step by step review of the annual budget process. The boards role in ongoing fiscal oversight throughout the year, as well as questions to ask and steps required to make changes throughout the year are also covered.

Community Engagement: How to work with parents, the public, and partner organizations to build understanding and active involvement in education, thereby increasing resources for academic achievement, reducing dropout, and improving student behavior.

Policy 101: The Legislature gave boards the authority to lead their districts by setting policies. Learn what policy is and the role administrative regulations play in the implementation of policy. The course includes common mistakes, steps for reviewing policy, best practices and problems that can result from holes in your policies.

Effective Meetings: State law requires that “Any duty imposed upon the district school board as a body must be performed at a regular or special meeting…” But conducting and participating in efficient and effective meetings requires more than knowledge of parliamentary procedure. This workshop will foster a discussion of how the board’s work can best be performed.  

Charter Schools: Charter schools are one of the innovative educational endeavors used to meet the wide range of needs for a variety of learners. Our goal is to help districts and charter schools with the legal framework, policies and leadership skills that ensure beneficial relationships among districts, charters and communities.

Communications 101: The Board Development and Communications departments will work closely with your board to develop a workshop for board members to identify what communication strategies might work best in your district and how you can improve your communication efforts.

Labor Relations: The OSBA Board Development and Labor Relations staff will collaborate to provide a workshop for board members in collective bargaining and other labor-related topics.

Media Relations: The Board Development and Communications departments will work closely with your board to develop a workshop for board members to learn how to best work with local and statewide media outlets and/or with social media platforms.

Public Meetings: This workshop is an overview of public meetings, minutes and executive sessions, how to stay out of hot water, how to handle email and electronic meetings, and current hot topics and recent developments.

Systems Thinking/Strategic Planning:  Do you have a common understanding of what success looks like in your district? Are your resources aligned for maximum impact? High performing districts need more than feel-good statements to be hung on the wall.  Goals must be used as a lens for all decisions, and everyone needs to pull in the same direction. This workshop is the beginning of a process to guide the district through goal-setting and preparing for goal-using in all aspects of district decision-making.

Specialized facilitation:  Do you need a facilitator or focus group leader for a community based committee or board meeting, for one meeting or a series of meetings? Let OSBA provide an objective outside facilitator to guide the process from planning to completion.

OSBA training and facilitation is available to you in your home district. Board specific training provides for....

•    Focus on particular issues
•    Choice of program
•    Scheduling to meet the needs of your board members and administrators
•    Teambuilding