A Typical School Board Meeting
I have been asked by some friends about what makes up a typical school board meeting. I’ll use this last meeting as one example.
Some people have questioned why certain topics have very little discussion in the public board meetings. To understand that, you must understand all the work that leads up to that point.
First of all, the board and administration does a lot of the hard work in the subcommittee meetings. Each board member will typically serve on five or six subcommittees aligned with their particular interest or skills. These subcommittees may meet several times before bringing the items to the full board for consideration. When the items do make it to the full board, we know that there has already been substantial consideration and research. Here are our subcommittees and the ones of which I am a member:
- Employee Benefits
- Long Range Planning and Capital Improvements Committee Meeting (*)
- Budget Committee (*)
- Child Nutrition
- Communications
- Curriculum and Instruction
- Board Policy Review (*)
- Transportation Committee
- Superintendent Evaluation & Compensation
- Facilities Naming Subcommittee (*)
- Technology Committee (*)
The next thing to keep in mind is that the larger, more important/complex topics will span many months of consideration. For example, we first started talking about the budget in the January timeframe and will not officially adopt the budget until the June or July meeting. The board also receives weekly “board updates” from administration. In the public meeting you will often hear board members ask for additional information and the Superintendent will instruct his staff to “please provide that information in the board update”.
As the public board meeting approaches, we will receive the materials for consideration. At the last board meeting, this consisted of approximately 120+ pages of confidential background information surrounding a level three grievance. The official board book itself was 261 pages. We spend several days reviewing the information and will often seek clarification of the person responsible for each request, normally the senior administrative staff.
Now it’s time for the board meeting. Here is the timeline from our last board meeting, which was fairly typical:
- 6:00PM to 6:45PM – We host a reception to honor our students who have received State or National level recognition. We had five students achieve National Merit Finalist this year. Many more were honored for their state level recognition.
- 6:45PM to 7:15PM – We have dinner with the newly announced Principals of Lone Star High School, Anderson Elementary, and the Frisco Early Childhood School.
- 7:15PM to 7:30PM – Executive session to discuss legal matters with our attorney.
- 7:30PM to 9:45PM – The regular public board meeting. John Hoxie is officially sworn in as a school board trustee.
- 9:45PM to 10:45PM – Closed session deliberations on the level three grievance.
- 10:45PM to 11:00PM – Final actions and wrap-up. Meeting is adjourned.
I hope that this gives you some idea of a typical board meeting. See the Frisco ISD web site for specific highlights related to this meeting.