Workshop Outline
(4-Hour Workshop with 6-Hour Option)

(Morning or afternoon)

Pre-Workshop Activities

• Distribute the Overview of Leadership Matters: Transforming Urban School Boards, and Education Week commentary.
• If you choose, have participants complete the two short written surveys, "Survey 1: Are Your Schools Successful?" [Handout 1] and "Survey 2: What Would Most Improve Student Learning?" [Handout 2] prior to the workshop.

1. Introductions And Welcoming Remarks

Recommended Time

15 minutes

Suggested Activities

• Ask participants to introduce themselves.
• Walk through the agenda, goals, and format for the day.
• Clarify that, although Leadership Matters focuses specifically on urban school systems, the research and lessons from today’s training also apply to suburban and rural districts as well. The urgency of issues facing urban schools today, the increasingly frequent questions about urban school boards’ role in effectively addressing these issues, and the belief that issues facing urban schools today will eventually face all schools led the National School Boards Foundation to dedicate itself to addressing issues of urban school governance.

2. Connecting to What Board Members Already Know

Recommended Time

15 minutes

Purpose

To actively involve participants in their own learning, and to build on what they already know.

Suggested Activities

• Verbally point out that all board members know what it takes to communicate and engage their communities. After all, most board members have successfully campaigned for election. Most have also participated in successful bond and tax levy campaigns.
• In a large group, ask participants to share lessons they’ve learned from those campaigns about effective communications. Specifically ask what they did right during successful campaigns.
• Write responses on a blank overhead or flip chart. You’re looking for the following elements of successful communications:

1. Connect with what people want, what they value, and what they expect from schools.
2. The importance of focus. It took a focused effort for them to win the board seat, pass the bond, etc.
3. Targeted audiences. Board members didn’t need to convince everyone to vote for them, just 50% plus 1.
4. Simple, easy-to-understand messages.
5. Mix of tactics--media, direct mail, door-to-door, meetings, debates, etc.
6. Good strategy.

• After 10 minutes or so of input from participants, clarify that successful communication is made up of many elements, but, this workshop will focus on only two points:

1. Connecting to what people value. This means listening well and focusing on the customer.
2. Staying focused on improved student achievement. This means making priorities and communicating about them clearly.

3. Connecting to What Your Constituents Value

Recommended Time

45 minutes

Purpose

To have participants answer two sets of questions that were at the heart of the Urban School Boards Initiative national research:

1. Are Your Schools Successful? and,
2. What Would Most Improve Student Learning?

And, to compare participants’ responses with those reported by the urban public and urban school board members.

Suggested Activities

• Ask for a show of hands from participants whose districts have done local public opinion research.
• Have participants fill out the following surveys:

Survey 1: Are Your Schools Successful?

The first survey asks participants about school system performance. Under each issue ask participants to circle whether they think their local schools are doing an "excellent", "good", "fair", "poor", or "very poor" job. [Handout 1]

Survey 2: What Would Most Improve Student Learning?

When participants have finished answering the first survey, distribute the second one, which focuses on strategies that would be effective in improving their local schools. On a scale of 1-10 (10 being the highest), have participants rate each strategy. [Handout 2]

NOTE
You may have participants fill out Handouts 1 and 2 as pre-workshop activities.

• On Survey 1, "Are Your Schools Successful?" [Handout 1], ask for a show of hands of participants who said their local school system was doing a "good" or excellent" job in each area.
• Make a rough estimate of the percentage of "good" or "excellent" responses for each area.
• Use the overhead to compare participants’ responses with answers from the national research—urban public and urban school board members. [Overhead 2]
• Discuss and interpret the findings. Focus especially on any differences between participants’ responses and responses of the urban public.

NOTE
Avoid getting into arguments about methodology, whether results would be identical in participants’ communities, or whether urban public responses are based on perception or reality, etc. The important point you want to make here is for participants to see that this kind of "perception gap" could have a bearing on their own work as board members--and to begin to see how a local survey like this might be a good first engagement/communication step.

Acknowledge up front that we’d expect differences between board members and the public, if for no other reason than board members presumably are closer to the schools and have a better understanding of district policies and practices. It’s not as if the public is right, the board is wrong — or vice-versa. Think of it instead as a communications challenge.

• Use the same strategy for getting participant input on Survey 2, "What Would Most Improve Student Learning?" [Handout 2]
• Ask for a show of hands of participants who rated each strategy a "10" for "extremely effective".
• Make a rough estimate of the percentage of "10s" for each strategy.
• Use the overhead to compare participants’ responses with answers from the national research--urban public and urban board members. [Overhead 3]

NOTE
Again, keep participants focused on the main point of this research—the importance of listening and connecting what they’re doing to what their public value the most. Help them see that if, for example, school boards are focusing on policies that bring more technology into the classroom, but their public is focused on safety and teacher quality, they have a gap that needs closing. Boards will not be able to build public understanding and support for their policies if they are on different wavelengths from their communities about what is important and about the school system’s success in addressing these important issues.

Board members have two main options for closing gaps like these, if they exist in their community.

1. They can shift their own school-improvement priorities to bring them more in line with the public’s priorities; or
2. 
   
3. They can do a better job of helping the public see that the board’s priorities make the most sense.
   
   Either way, effective communication will be essential.

4. Conducting Local Research

Recommended Time

15 minutes

Purpose

To encourage participants to replicate national research in their own communities.

Suggested Activities

• Again, ask participants if their districts have already done research in their own communities.

NOTE
If participants have not done this kind of research, they can use the National School Boards Foundation’s survey instrument at www.nsbf.org as a model.

• Conclude this part of the session by letting participants know that the remainder of the day will be spent giving board members specific advice and tools for identifying—and closing—the gaps in their own communities.

5. Break

Recommended Time

15 minutes

NOTE
In the 4-hour workshop, you now have about two hours to cover four subjects, which isn’t enough to adequately cover all this ground. Our recommendation is that you spend more time on the first two areas, less on the last two, when participants presumably will have a better frame of reference for this work. We would also recommend a 15-minute break somewhere in here.

In the 6-hour workshop, we would allow about four hours for the following discussion, roughly one hour for each issue. This will give more time for participants to get into the discussion questions and to begin identifying barriers that get in the way of them engaging their communities around these issues.

An alternative activity to supplement or replace the material here is a Case Study Exercise [Handout 15].

6. Focusing the Agenda: Intro

Recommended Time

15 minutes

Suggested Activities

• Make the point that the Urban School Boards Initiative didn’t just identify perception gaps. It also convened a roundtable of urban education experts -- board members, superintendents, principals, business people, parent activists, union leaders, etc. — to suggest effective strategies that urban boards can use to help close these gaps. The roundtable focused on four primary areas:

Focus 1. Academic expectations, resources, and accountability
High expectations for academic achievement must be clearly articulated and must be backed by resources, system-wide authority, and accountability needed to meet those expectations.

Focus 2. Parent and public involvement
Parents and other members of the public must be actively involved as partners and allies in the process of public education.

Focus 3. Teachers
Top-quality education depends on high-quality teachers—and school boards must focus on attracting and keeping teachers who know their subject and how to teach it.

Focus 4. Learning environment
School boards must ensure that all students attend schools that are safe and orderly and where diversity is respected and valued

• Explain that for each focus area, the national roundtable made several recommendations, offered examples of successful practice in cities from around the country, and suggested many questions that board members should be asking to make sure their school system is on track. The remainder of the day will be focused on these four areas.

NOTE
The four focus areas emerged from the National School Board Foundation’s national roundtable; and it is possible that local priorities might differ. That is why it is important for local school systems to do their own research.

7. Focusing the Agenda: Academic Expectations, Resources, And Accountability

Recommended Time

30 minutes for the four hour workshop or 60 minutes for the six hour workshop.

Suggested Activities

• Describe the five recommendations from the national roundtable. [Handout 3]
• Summarize the good practice examples—Philadelphia, San Francisco, and Pinellas County—from the report. [Handout 4]
• Use the questions from the report to stimulate the discussion. We recommend that, of the eight questions in this area, board members select the top two priorities for board attention in their city. [Handout 5]

NOTE
It is not that the other questions are not important; but unless we help board members have a reasonable starting point for next steps, they might get stuck before they begin. After all, the major recommendation from the research is for boards to get focused.

• Have participants make a list of priorities, then have selected participants discuss them with the large group.
  
  NOTE
  This prioritizing work will be especially valuable if a district’s whole board is at the workshop; if not, participants should be expected to share this work with their colleagues back home.

8. Focusing the Agenda: Parent and Public Involvement

Recommended Time

30 minutes for the four hour workshop or 60 minutes for the six hour workshop.

Suggested Activities

• Describe the six recommendations from the national roundtable. [Handout 6]
• Summarize the good practice examples—Raleigh and Seattle—from the report. [Handout 7]
• Use the questions from the report to stimulate the discussion. We recommend that, of the eight questions in this area, board members select the top two priorities for board attention in their city. [Handout 8]
• Have participants make a list of priorities, then have selected participants discuss them with the large group.

9. Focusing the Agenda: Teachers

Recommended Time

30 minutes for the four hour workshop or 60 minutes for the six hour workshop.

Suggested Activities

• Describe the three recommendations from the national roundtable. [Handout 9]
• Summarize the good practice example—New York City District #2—from the report. [Handout 10]
• Use the questions from the report to stimulate discussion. We recommend that, of the eight questions in this area, board members select the top two priorities for board attention in their city. [Handout 11]
• Have participants make a list of priorities, then have selected participants discuss them with the large group.

10. Focusing the Agenda: Learning Environment

Recommended Time

30 minutes for the four hour workshop or 60 minutes for the six hour workshop.

Suggested Activities

• Describe the five recommendations from the national roundtable. [Handout 12]
• Summarize the good practice example—Miami-Dade County—from the report. [Handout 13]
• Use the questions from the report to stimulate discussion. We recommend that, of the eight questions in this area, board members select the top two priorities for board attention in their city. [Handout 14]
• Have participants make a list of priorities, then have selected participants discuss them with the large group.

11. Closing Remarks, Feedback and Next Steps

Recommended Time

30 minutes

Suggested Activities

• Have participants brainstorm about how their state associations can help them with next steps.
• Have participants complete the feedback form on today’s session. [Handout 16]

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