Master Board Courses
Additional Courses
Boards interested in pursuing Master Board status should
plan to begin with Understanding School Boards in a Democracy, Improving
Communication and Building Our Team as the first three courses. These modules
set a framework for reference throughout the rest of the program and include
basic knowledge and skills essential for all high-performing boards. The
sequence of courses will be developed in consultation with each board.
Understanding School Boards in a
Democracy
This unit serves as the foundational course in NCSBA’s Master Board program
and explores the purpose of the board of education as well as the skills that
are needed for boards to solve public problems.
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Improving Communication
What skills are needed to master communication with your fellow board
members? Improving Communication is recommended as the second unit and explores
difficulties in and barriers to effective communication, as well as examining
the essential conditions for effective communication. This course is extremely
interactive! (top)
Building Our Team
Building Our Team is recommended as the third unit and will enlighten your
board on how to translate current team strengths into a more dynamic board.
Participants will identify their style as team players and the full board will
analyze its total team profile, identifying better ways of communicating,
determining factors that influence their trust in others, and developing a plan
to increase trust. Skills acquired through this unit are foundational to
subsequent courses. (top)
Working Through Conflict
Board members will develop strategies to work with conflict—examining their own
conflict-handling style and recognizing the style of others. In this course,
boards will work on skills and strategies for conflict situations, recognize
effective and less effective results of conflict and have the opportunity to
develop board guidelines for conflict situations.
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Improving Board/Superintendent
Relations
This course seeks to clarify board/superintendent roles and responsibilities in
terms of behaviors, governance vs. management, and the key works of boards.
Participants will identify ways to prevent, intervene and/or redirect problem
situations between the board and superintendent. (top)
Solving Problems and
Making Decisions
Identify and practice steps in collaborative problem solving during this course.
Building on skills developed in previous master board courses, your board will
analyze the various methods of decision making, practice consensus building and
understand the reasons for poor decisions. (Prerequisites: Understanding School
Boards in a Democracy, Improving Communication and Working Through Conflict) (top)
Connecting with the Community
How should your board structure community involvement, obtain input, explain
actions, facilitate information flow and connect with the internal community
(teachers and other staff). Connecting with the Community will allow you to
focus on these items and so much more! Your board will receive guidance in how
to approach public participation in board meetings and understand the importance
of policies that support communication. You will gain insight about the
importance of public engagement today. (top)
Managing Meetings
Is there anything you would want to change about your board meetings? Take this
course and examine issues surrounding the development and content of the board
meeting agenda. You also will have the opportunity to critique board meeting
situations that relate to lessons about effective meetings.
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Planning the Evaluation of the
Superintendent
Gain a better understanding of why you need to effectively evaluate the
superintendent. Your board will focus on prerequisite understandings and guiding
principles about evaluating your superintendent for the evaluation process, as
well as work on steps in developing your evaluation plan. (top)
Evaluating Your Board
Evaluating Your Board allows participants to review their individual performance
as a member of the board, as well as the board as a whole. By the end of the
course, board members will understand personal and board strengths and develop
improvement goals individually and for the operation of the board.
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