The school board secretary’s role in contributing to district goals

The school board secretary has a unique and important role in supporting the efficiency, transparency and accountability of the school board. From keeping track of changes in policies and regulations and staying on top of compliance, to maintaining meeting minutes and records, the secretary’s responsibilities elevate the entire board’s service.

Gervonder Brown, executive assistant to the superintendent and board clerk in Fairfield County School District, sums up the role simply: “We are the glue and the bridge between administration and the board.”

But how does the board secretary accomplish myriad responsibilities successfully — and how can technology help? Let’s take a look.

5 key things board secretaries and clerks do

The board relies on the board secretary or clerk for several key areas necessary to the board’s smooth function:

1. Recording and maintaining accurate meeting minutes
2. Ensuring compliance with policies and laws
3. Facilitating communication and acting as a liaison
4. Organizing and managing documents
5. Supporting strategic planning

1. Recording and maintaining accurate meeting information

The school board secretary plays a vital role through the recording of accurate, unbiased meeting minutes that are reflective of the work accomplished at the board meeting and the goals of the school board and support the board in making informed and strategic decisions.

School board meeting minutes provide an official and legal record of the school board's activities and decisions. These minutes become official public record and, therefore, must be accessible and understandable to the general public. This can be a complicated task depending on the tools the secretary or clerk has available. . Other important elements to keep in mind:

• Minutes support the school board in achieving district goals by noting completed work and tasks that remain.
• Board meeting minutes reflect the board's true intentions and goals, which is why it is important to provide this paper trail on how board discussions and considerations led to decisions.
• The board secretary should capture discussions regarding areas of growth or new opportunities for the district to take advantage of.

Streamline your meeting minutes

This downloadable checklist helps public education board administrators ensure that every meeting’s minutes are concise, clear and compliant with all necessary regulations.

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2. Ensuring compliance with policies and laws

The accessibility of past school board meeting minutes is not just imperative to informing constituents, helping board members and maintaining transparency. Accessible minutes are critical to ensuring compliance. Just as meetings are required to be made public (check the sunshine laws for your state for details regarding these regulations), meeting minutes must be made available for public review.

3. Facilitating communication and acting as a liaison

Board alignment is crucial to getting the work done and creating a path to success for local schools. A misaligned board can have a severe impact on schools. Diligent Community director Kristen Karel says, “They struggle to make decisions, and it's the students and the community that suffer. You may see things like student achievement or graduation rates not improving. The quality of life for citizens can suffer.”

Ensuring the board can work well together and has the tools and training they need to work together falls on the secretary or clerk, and that may require the secretary to be the bridge that Brown described earlier. Diligent’s webinar, Aligning strategy: get the board on the same page, offers more insight on ensuring board alignment.

Andrea Messina, CEO of the Florida School Boards Association, also notes the importance of fair play, saying, “The role is to support and treat everyone the same and make sure they have access.”

Brown stresses the need to meet people where they are: “My board consists of members that are tech savvy and board members who ask, ‘Can you walk me through this process?’ You must foster the relationship in which you're able to locate your board member and say, hey, I noticed I sent out an email and you didn't respond, or, I tell them I sent an email and they tell me they didn’t see it. (I can say,) ‘Let me show you how.’”

[Webinar] From roles to results: Getting your school board on the same page

Aligned leadership or organized chaos — how cohesive is your school board? In today’s complex education landscape, ensuring that your school board operates as a cohesive, goal-oriented team is critical for driving meaningful outcomes. But aligning diverse perspectives, managing communication, and maintaining focus on shared goals can be challenging. Join us for this engaging panel discussion featuring the governance team from Sun Prairie Area School District in Wisconsin. Our expert panel will share their strategies for fostering strong governance, streamlining communication, and creating alignment across the board. Register now, even if you can't attend live — we'll send you the recording!

4. Organizing and managing documents

A public board has a wealth of documents to use and consider in its work, and ensuring these documents are findable and up-to-date falls on the board secretary or clerk. Through the creation and management of meeting documents the board secretary supports the board in achieving district goals with the ability to make strategic decisions based upon the access of accurate board and district information.

Leveraging the right technology, the board secretary can maintain and share meeting minutes and related documents through a simplified process utilizing board management software. Reports, contracts, and other documents can be linked to meeting agendas and minutes to be shared with the school board, district administrators, and members of the community.

5. Supporting strategic planning

Without the secretary to maintain an accurate and unbiased record of board meetings and the related materials, school boards can lose out on new opportunities for district growth or may make uneducated or ill-informed decisions due to a lack of information. These board officers ensure compliance with important laws that hold the board accountable ethically and promote trust and transparency with the community, a currency that is essential to district and board success.

Technology for school board secretaries

Board management software can support school board secretaries and all of their varying responsibilities that contribute to the success of the district.

• Producing meeting minutes. The creation of a meeting minutes document after the board meeting can be a difficult and lengthy process for board secretaries, especially if the amount of information that must be recorded into the official record is substantial. Diligent Community automates production of the school board's meeting minutes document, a huge timesaver for board secretaries that can also improve the accuracy of details and information.
• Making agenda documents accessible. With Diligent Community, all types of attachments and documents can be linked to specific agenda items and meeting minutes. If the school board records meetings through video or audio, the footage of meetings can be attached to minutes. All of these documents and files can then be easily distributed to board members, the public and other stakeholders. Through Diligent Community, school board meeting minutes are also easily searchable through keyword searches. This feature is helpful as previous meeting minutes may be reviewed for upcoming meetings, projects and more.
• Supporting compliance, accountability and transparency. Sunshine laws outline a great amount of regulations for how school boards conduct meetings and other business, so it is imperative that school board members are abreast of these regulations. Leveraging the right board management software, meeting documents can be easily accessed and maintained in one streamlined location to support compliance with sunshine laws. Access to recordings of board meetings, attachments to meeting agendas, and other related materials and information can be easy and efficient.

Diana Roadcap, senior training specialist with Diligent, says, “What it comes down to is, their role is all about support. When supporting the members of the board, you want to provide clear, timely communication coupled with accurate information so that the board can make educated decisions.

The board secretary’s list of responsibilities is long, but they can find help. Diligent Community has been designed to support these tasks and more, supporting the efficiency, transparency and accountability of the school board.