Last February, Dr. Claire Miller, shared the story of how her district, Barrow County School System, prepared for District Accreditation. This blog is an attempt to document the steps she outlined in her presentation which I think will be very useful for other school districts who have accreditation work looming! Her school district used eBOARD*’s ...
The eBOARDsolutions 2012 User Conference was held in late February in Atlanta, Georgia. Almost 200 eBOARD users gathered for a day of learning with and from their colleagues about how to take full advantage of the web-based suite of software tools that they have implemented for managing and aligning the work of their school districts. ...
Is your school board’s work in the weeds or are you looking from a global perspective? It’s so easy to get off track. For boards of education, it is imperative that the board simply follow the system-wide strategic plan with that plan driving the monthly meetings of the board. So why do boards end up ...
Local school boards meet all around this country in governing our nation’s public schools. Who makes the agenda? In my home state of Georgia, the superintendent and board chair have the responsibility of creating the monthly agenda; each member of the board can additionally request that an item be placed on the agenda. What’s put ...
Is your head in the clouds? It should be. If you are a school administrator or a board member, you may have never heard or thought about “cloud” technology. I mentioned the word the other day in an e-mail and was surprised to hear back that it meant nothing to the recipients. I would respond ...
Planning for accreditation can be an incredibly busy time for any district. Our plates are all full, as the tired saying reminds us, but we needed to collaborate on this extremely important sign and seal of our district work. And as with all things in a school district, working with adults is an excellent opportunity ...
At the eBOARDsolutions User Conference in March 2011, I co-presented with Dr. Valery Hall of the Forsyth County Public Schools in Georgia. In her role of assisting both the superintendent and the board of education, Valery is integrally involved in preparing the agendas for their board’s meetings. Thus, our session involved agenda preparation and effective ...
Over the last two decades I’ve worked with school systems (both administrators and teachers) helping them to more effectively use technology. In most of these cases, this has been in the service of a technology company such as Apple, Promethean or eBOARDsolutions. According to this Edupotia article “Shaping Tech for the Classroom” by Mark Prensky ...
With elections across the country at the end of 2010, there has been a good bit of turnover with locally elected officials. Simply put, 2010 was not the year for incumbents. In the world of public service, there are many new school board members beginning terms this month. How is a change in a school ...
Georgia’s local school systems can ask their communities to pass a Special Local Option Sales Tax (SPLOST) for additional revenue. Those pennies can really add up. That’s how we paid for our high school’s auditorium. To the school board, how do you get your community to support this initiative? First, if you’ve passed a SPLOST ...
Education leaders want their districts and schools to be high performing. To do that, leaders recognize that they must create Performance Cultures. But what exactly is does this mean and what do leaders do to create a Performance Culture? Culture, simply defined, means “the way we do things around here.” At Georgia Leadership Institute for ...
A solution to transform public education Last week I had the privilege of being one of three speakers in the TEDx session at the NSBA Technology and Learning Conference in Phoenix, Arizona. The first speaker, Julie Evans, CEO of Project Tomorrow addressed the importance of listening to students about how they want to learn in ...
With the demands and complexities of public school systems in the 21st century, it is hard to imagine how school districts can continue raising the bar without effective and comprehensive strategic planning. As I talk with people about strategic planning, I typically see people fall into one of two camps. Those who love it and ...
With tighter budgets than ever before in education, what do you do when the public questions the work of the board of education? This time of year when it seems like every citizen has something to say about the millage rate of their school system. Well, as board members, it’s imperative that we are transparent ...