Question #22 – External Voice: Does Your Board Reflect Community Vision/Values through Advocacy?

Rick Maloney

(49 Questions to Ask Your Board)

[School boards] establish a strong communications structure to inform and engage both internal and external stakeholders in setting and achieving district goals They are masterful in two dimensions of community leadership: advocating for their school districts and developing and maintaining strong strategic partnerships.

– NSBA1

Advocacy is the responsibility of a school board to speak on behalf of students. Using its platform as community representative, the board informs the public, including (especially) state and national policymakers, of the community’s vision and values for students, and student needs. When it does so, the board has the potential to increase support for the community’s students. In 2024 the National School Boards Association listed some challenges faced by school boards: 

  • Providing support for historically disadvantaged students.
  • Increasing broadband access and closing the homework gap.
  • Ensuring that each classroom is staffed with a highly qualified teacher.
  • Providing support for students with disabilities and mental health needs.
  • Addressing learning recovery as a result of inequities already existing, but exacerbated by the pandemic.2

These challenges and others can be addressed directly with resources already within the board’s influence, but those resources have limits. To fully meet student needs, the board should also reach out for supplemental support. Boards may seek some additional funding directly from the local community. Externally, the board’s advocacy efforts may be directed toward state and national policymakers, who need information about local needs and priorities to influence legislation.

Scenario: Jeff, in the monthly superintendent update, briefed the board about a report by the district’s architect-engineering firm, appraising the current status of facilities and the projected costs of maintenance and repairs. The report also compared costs of repair with replacement of aging facilities. Jeff rounded out the update with a report on the availability of funds for this purpose from local levy authority and a potential bond for new construction, both available with local taxpayer support. He added the potential for tapping into a pool of state funds set aside to supplement citizen-approved new construction in communities that are eligible for those supplemental funds. Finally, he addressed the possibility of reaching out to state legislators for increases in new construction support based on critical needs that cannot be met through local sources. “Wow!” declared Susan, “I didn’t realize our little district had such huge fiscal needs.’

Richard Elmore once introduced an exercise: “I used to think…and now I think…”3 as a way of reflecting on how our thinking tends to change over time. Considering my own thinking about advocacy…

I used to think that advocacy was strictly for board members who, rather than spending their limited time focusing on local issues that they had some control over, took up the cause of changing “them” – policymakers at state or federal level over whose domain local boards conveniently have no direct responsibility. These “activists” (my term) seemed motivated to expand their self-importance and get an ego boost that comes from being a “change agent.” It seemed to me that our local governance “plate” was already quite full, thank you very much, and that we should first get our own house in order before trying to change the world.

Now I think that selective and targeted advocacy is a legitimate and important area of board responsibility, one that we should not avoid. Maybe our motivation is different – we want to do what is best for our kids at the local level – but our devotion to delivering the message should be just as energized as the most outspoken activists. We should translate our local community values into powerful advocacy messages designed to inform and motivate policymakers at state and national levels, and we should take the necessary steps to deliver those messages on behalf of the community we serve.

Many policy decisions of federal and state governments impact students in local community schools. For this reason, boards that take their responsibility seriously will vigorously exercise their external voice by regularly advocating to policymakers on behalf of students and their needs.

Through its advocacy function, the board provides information needed by policymakers to make the best policy choices from among many alternatives. This includes matters such as public support of schools and conflicting priorities such as the right of local taxpayers to provide additional support for their local schools vs. the value of equity in statewide funding and the need to balance the variable capacity of local resources to provide such support.

Scenario: Disparities in property values have long enabled districts in wealthy areas of our state to expend considerably more on their students than is the case in “property-poor” districts. A recent state bill proposed to reduce this inequity by shrinking local property taxing authority to half its current limit and add an equivalent amount to the state property tax set aside for the same category of expense, with significant weighting to account for more needy districts. It would have had the effect of distributing part of the inequitable local tax burden in more equitable fashion across the state. Our board sent a resolution in support of this measure to our state legislative delegation, urging them to prioritize the goal of more equitably funding basic education for all students in the state. We followed up by scheduling an appointment to meet with our legislative delegation and explain how this affects students.

The effective board reaches out to express community values and priorities, communicating upward to inform and persuade policymakers, key communicators, and the public on critical public issues, such as education reform initiatives affecting the district’s students.

NOTE: Please feel free to comment. The opinions expressed in these blog entries are informed by references cited herein, and the experiences of the author. Your comments are welcome additions to the conversation.

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Next: Question #23 – Does Your Board of Directors Direct?