School Board Meeting Guidelines

School Board Meetings are an important way to establish a connection between the school and
community. They often cover a wide range of topics, from student achievements and recognition to
building and curricular plans to budget discussions. School Board members are some of the most
important local elected officials because they have a lot of say in what happens at your local school. For
this project, complete the following steps:

STEP 1: Attend a local K-12 school board meeting . This can be in your home district or it can be in the
district where you are completing your observation hours. Note: most school boards meet once a
month so it is important that you PLAN AHEAD!

STEP 2: Write a Reflection. After attending the meeting, write a reflection on your experience. Be sure
to address the following questions:

1. How is the view of a school board meeting as an observer different from your former view as a
student?
2. What was the most interesting part of the meeting?
3. What are some examples from the meeting that demonstrate how the school operates on a
local level?
4. What are some examples from the meeting that demonstrate how the school fits into the
community?

Your reflection post should be a minimum of 500 words.

The school board meetings organized by the respective districts are very important for the community
and also for the students in the community. I have never attended a school board meeting, as a matter
of fact; this assignment is the only reason why I know something about these school board meetings.
Where I am from it is not very common to have these kinds of meetings. I am not so sure we have them,
because the system is quite different in other countries, especially in Latin America. The only thing I am
pretty sure we have is school meetings with the teachers and some parents that represent all the
parents in the school, but we are not divided by districts, so it is very different over there.

One thing that I had noticed is that in almost every event, Americans sing their national anthem before
the meeting, or event starts. Something else that seems rare for me was to see that these meetings are
allowed to have audience. This awed me because it seems like a very serious event and I saw some kids
participating and handing out some papers to the members that were talking.

1. How is the view of a school board meeting as an observer different from your former view as a
student?
In my opinion, the observers might not know everything that is going on with the district, therefore they
will not know the reason why the board is making those decisions, or they will not know how to help.

2. What was the most interesting part of the meeting?

They seem to have different campaigns each month or each period. I think this is pretty cool. The
campaign that was presented on the school board meeting that I saw was named “Rock your socks (for
world down syndrome day)”

3. What are some examples from the meeting that demonstrate how the school fits into the
community?

From what I have seen, the community is very involved in everything that is going on around their
people. The people from the school board are always focused in getting some benefits for the
community.