Board Committees

[Kelli Anne Jennings]

In terms of Board Committees do you limit the amount that a community member can serve on. For example a community member can only serve on two or can a community member serve on all the committees and how do you handle them speaking about it during community comments.

[Paul Haggett]

Heidi, in our district, the superintendent sets the agenda for committee meetings, while a board committee chair reports out at BOE meetings.

[Paul Haggett]

We do not have community members on our BOE committees (Budget/Audit, Policy and Facilities) but do solicit members of the public to ad hoc committees. A recent example was a school consolidation/facilities study committee that resulted in a capital project proposal. Since board members are representatives of the community, it seems unnecessary to have community members outside the BOE sit on standing committees.

[Tricia Connor Biles]

Our board has spent some time defining the board committee structure, membership, chair responsibilities, and protocols. We have created a reference document with this information to help guide us. We are also working on a district plan for collaboration and shared decision making that outlines the structure of committees at the board level, district level, and building level. Putting this information down in writing has helped us clarify many nuances that get misunderstood by stakeholders. Let me know if you would like to see our reference docs.

[Colette Dow]

We have several Board Committees - Finance, Facilities, Policy, Audit, Curriculum, Instruction & Assessment and Communications. No community serve on these but all meetings are open to the public and they are welcome to observe whether in person or remote. We also have 2 community advisory committees - Student Achievement and Budget which are made up of primarily community members with board member liaisons to each. All open to the public also. We have established ad hoc committees, ie., Capital Project Committee and Space & Enrollment Advisory, in the past when the need arose. Again all those meetings were held in public. In the past we have limited community members to participation in one advisory committee but we no longer have this limit.

[Suzie Lustig]

I am a new president, but a BOE member for 5 years. All our "committees" right now are district committees- and we only have one right now which is a Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Task Force. Facilitated by our superintendent and it has sub committees with BOE members, staff and community members. However back in my PTA days there were several committees and we had to apply to the district. I am curious about what is typical as BOE committees? And if I should be implementing this type of format- part of the reason I logged in today was on this very topic because I read a news story about an Ethics Committee in another school district and it piqued my curiosity.

[Heidi Cambareri]

Board committees are sort of new for us too- other than Audit committee. We just started a Policy Committee and Communications Committee last year but getting them off the ground and really working has been slow, in part thanks to pandemic. As of now we do not have community members on these committees. Do most of you? And for those with policy and communication committees, who facilitates the meetings and work of the committees- the Superintendent or a board member?

[Anjeanette Emeka]

We don't have community members on any of our committees, however we have a robust report out process at our BOE meetings so the community can keep up with what the committees are doing. It used to be that they could voice questions or concerns during Public Comment, and now that we are virtual, we accept email statements that we read on behalf of community members as long as they are submitted to the superintendent's office by 3pm the day of the meeting.

[Steven Sabo]

We have three community members on our, audit, policy and capital project committees. Three board members also serve on each committee (6 members on each committee between boe and community). We have had the same community member serve on all three in the same year when we were begging people to be on them.

[Carol Popolow Abraham]

Our board president appoints trustees to their committee seats. We have community members on some of those committees but they do not speak at board meetings. The board trustee assigned to that committee gives a committee report to the rest of the board at the public meetings.

[Mark Brody]

This is a new concept for me. We have never had community members on our board committees. That being said, from time to time we have formed committees to deal with specific issues that have included members of all our constituencies. For example, we formed a committee a few years ago to formulate a Vision, Mission, Values statement for our district that included students, teachers, staff members, administrators, parents and community members. And we have also had constituent participation in our advocacy committee efforts for fair foundation aid funding. These have been very rewarding efforts, but I'm not sure I would want to see routine community participation in our committees. Interesting question.