Communicating in a Web 2.0
Does your superintendent blog? How are other school districts using Facebook and YouTube to communicate with constituents? How can a wiki improve communication among stakeholders in a school district? Examine the brave new world of Web 2.0 and learn how to apply it to communicate and build consensus in your district.

Community Engagement: A Model for 21st Century Learning
East Syracuse-Minoa has engaged more than 800 community members, including students, parents, faculty, businesses and community leaders, to develop its strategic plan. Examine an array of community engagement tools. Learn how this process has helped improve student achievement and increase graduation rates.

Engaging the Community in Budget Reallocations
Honeoye Falls-Lima has a zero-based program budget process that has achieved creative reallocation of funds and the lowest per-pupil spending in the region for 17 years. The community has a major role in the process. Discover how you can do this in your district.

Got Brand? Creating a Distinctive District Identity
Take a page from the private sector. A brand can be your district’s most valuable asset. Learn how to create a distinctive brand identity for your district that will add value and pay dividends for your district.

Helping Parents Help Minority Students Value Education
Learn how families can help their children value education and as a result take more responsibility and become more active in the activities necessary for success in schools. Make “families that study together, succeed together” your district’s new mantra.

Strategic Planning: Building a Community Coalition
Examine a model designed to engage the community in the creation and implementation of a data-driven, focused, relevant strategic plan for your district plan.

The Village’s Roles in Educating Minority Students
Get strategies for ensuring your students – especially your minority students – take advantage of the quality educational experience your district provides. Learn how to involve your entire community in the process.

Community Help in District Layoffs
Orange-Ulster BOCES has developed a program to support employees and their families who are facing layoffs. Learn how providing proactive support during these challenging times can help set a positive direction for your district.

Creative Cost-Cutting for Health Care Benefits
Erie 1 BOCES has created a health care benefits trust which has already saved close to $9 million for the nearly 20 districts that participate. It includes a strong partnership between labor and management, and a focus on enrollee wellness. Find out how they did it and how you can tap into their success.

Improving Labor Relations through Interest-Based Negotiations
Understanding the interest behind the position before you go to the bargaining table may help you create greater labor peace and a win-win for all parties involved. Examine a simple model for converting bargaining positions into interests in order to find a compromise. Get tips for taking the confrontation out of labor negotiations, along with real-life examples.

Negotiations – Bargaining for Survival
The current fiscal crisis underscores the need for district-union negotiations that are grounded in reality. Explore such issues as salary freezes, health insurance cost-containment and furloughs. What can be negotiated in your district to cut expenses and stretch existing district resources? Learn how to prepare for and engage in such negotiations.

Turning Administrator Dislike into Like
Learn 15 reasons why teachers and others dislike administrators. Identify common errors administrators make which can derail a district’s progress toward excellence and a supportive educational culture. Then apply all you’ve identified to help in hiring and supporting your administrators.

Audit Committee 101
Explore the advantages of forming an effective
audit committee to assist with district finance oversight, including the importance of monitoring the internal control process. Share examples of common district financial problems and how an audit committee can help solve them.

Consolidation Considerations for Rural Schools
What should your rural school district consider if you’re contemplating a merger with one of your neighbors? Hear from those who have been in your shoes and learn from their experiences.

Coordinating School District Audit Services
Better understand the distinct role of your district audit services. Learn how to reduce service overlap and thereby reduce your overall district costs.

Effective Audit Committees
What does it take to create and maintain an effective audit committee? Let Rush- Henrietta, together with the district’s external auditor, show you how. Examine the district’s procedures, including meeting format, and communications with the claims auditor, business official, internal and external auditors, and the board of education.

Energy Performance Contracting – A Bright Idea
Want to identify energy that is currently wasted at your district and leverage it to upgrade your facilities, reduce your bond or budget, and improve your students’ learning environment? Energy performance contracting, a statesponsored incentive program, can help your district save energy and reduce our country’s reliance on fossil fuels. Find out how.

Getting the Most from Your Building Condition Survey
Examine an enhanced building condition survey that is completed with a tablet personal computer. Watch how the survey can easily be adapted for use in budget and project planning.

High-Performance School Buildings
The State Education Department’s NY-CHPS guidelines provide a framework to help school districts design and build sustainable school buildings to enhance the educational environment and facilitate learning. Learn how others have used these guidelines to help ensure healthy, safe, high-quality learning environments for their schools.

Life Cycle Cost Analysis for Building Construction
Hear an expert from the International Masonry Institute explain life cycle costing, a tool to consider lifetime maintenance costs when evaluating options for materials used in new construction.

Long-Term Financial Planning – A Governance Team Approach
Your entire governance team is responsible for your district fiscal operation. Learn how this key responsibility goes beyond approving the current year’s budget to understanding and supporting a financial strategic plan that guides long-term programmatic resources and expenditure decisions of your school district. Get practical tips for prudent long-term financial planning.

Natural Gas Development and Wind Farming
Depending on your district location, you may be able to generate income by leasing school district property for natural gas development. And wind farming may be practical in some Western New York districts as well as other districts. What are the legal issues? Explore environmental issues and get practical strategies for protecting your district while maximizing income.

Optimal School Budgeting During Tough Fiscal Times
Examine the realities of the school budget development process from addressing student needs, school financial management, expenditures and revenues to communicating your school budget objectives effectively to your community. Get a financial roadmap to follow throughout the year, plus strategies for getting out the vote to pass your budget and techniques for community engagement prior to the budget vote date.

Reach for High Performance
Examine two specific reports required by the State Education Department that are designed as tools to help districts set and achieve facility goals, including goals for meeting High Performance Building Guidelines (NY-CHPS) for existing buildings. Learn how to use them as you establish goals for your next facilities plan.

To Consolidate or Not to Consolidate?
If you’re considering any kind of consolidation, begin by knowing the right questions to ask. Examine a process for weighing the pros and cons to determine whether this road is the right one for your district to take.

Your District’s Financial Health in Tough Economic Times
Get help in evaluating your district’s current fiscal health. Explore innovative strategies to improve your district’s long-term financial health.

Aligning Policy with Sound Assessment and Grading Practices
Does your district have an assessment, homework or grading policy? What do student report cards look like? Learn how to evaluate your district’s documents and discuss how to align district policies with sound assessment and grading practices.

Challenging Parental Placements of Students with Disabilities
A parent’s decision to unilaterally place a disabled child in a private school can bring significant contingent liabilities to a public school district. What are these liabilities, how may they be limited, and what must a parent demonstrate to make this kind of placement at the district’s expense? Find out here.

Cyber World School Policy
Get an interactive glimpse of the latest technologies and learn how they are impacting on our students and school communities. Explore new provisions of the Children’s Internet Protection Act. Get copies of related policies to take back to your district.

Ethics and Educational Governance
How can we maintain high ethical and moral grounds in our governance decision-making to best serve students? How can we keep ourselves from becoming paralyzed in tough situations? Share best practices and solve examples of school governance ethical dilemmas. Get the latest research and learn how to apply it in real-life situations.

The First-Year Superintendent: Strategies for Success
The school board/superintendent relationship is critical for success, especially with a first-year superintendent. Get strategies to develop a successful working relationship; identify roles, expectations and needs, and establish priorities. Whether your district has recently hired a first-year superintendent or will be doing so in the months ahead, you’ll gain useful tips for navigating that important first year.

Overcoming Opposition: A Governance Team Survival Guide
Help your governance team work more effectively. Review the seven crucial ingredients of leadership. Learn a systematic approach to influencing the key internal audiences necessary to a successful program and presence. Examine a “survival manifesto,” a series of behaviors that lead to increased control of outcomes, and processes and perceptions.

Superintendent Snapshot
Examine superintendent data from the New York State Council of School Superintendents’ seventh snapshot. The findings provide insight into the board and superintendent relationship that characterize a high-performing and effective governance team. Critical data regarding retirement trends, contractual benefits, the leadership gap, and superintendents’ perceptions will be featured.

A Model Bias Prevention Office
Bias-related behavior at school and/or at schoolsponsored activities hinders student and family engagement, and prevents students and their families from fully participating in their education. To solve this issue, Ithaca created a “Bias Prevention Office.” Learn about this unique approach and how it has positively affected the school climate.

Creating an Asthma-Friendly School
Get an overview of asthma and its effects on your students and school. How can your district make students with asthma more comfortable? What information should you provide? Tailor lessons learned to your district’s unique experiences.

Discovering Diversity in Uniquely Non-Diverse Communities
Honeoye Falls-Lima, the least ethnically diverse district in Monroe County, won a Magna Award from the National School Board Association’s American School Board Journal for its methods of promoting diversity awareness. The effort includes curriculum, professional development, employee recruitment and community awareness. Take tips back to your own district.

Fuel Up to Play: A Child Nutrition and Fitness Initiative
Examine the childhood obesity epidemic and a series of strategies to help raise a healthier generation of children. Learn how the Child Nutrition and Fitness Initiative can be used to encourage physical activity and enhance nutrition for your students for better health.

Kids Growing Food
Examine a hands-on program that helps teach students in all grades about growing food. The curriculum emphasizes the importance of agriculture to our survival. It’s a win-win for the entire community.

Meeting Title I Parent Involvement Requirements
New York State Parental Information and Resource Centers (PIRC) exist to help schools strengthen parental involvement. Find out how PIRC programs can help your school meet federal Title I requirements. Learn successful and creative parental involvement activities and best practices.

Sharing the Best of BOCES
BOCES from across the state will share their most innovative and successful programs, as well as best practices in this always popular showcase. You won’t want to miss it!

Tune Up Your Music Program
What does a good school music program look like? What activities are appropriate? Are your school concerts merely entertainment or a demonstration of student achievement? Get answers to these questions and more. Make sure your district program is in perfect pitch.

Confronting Criminal Activity on School Grounds
For a safer school, becoming familiar with legal issues surrounding the identification, investigation and elimination of fraud, theft, sexual misconduct, violence and other criminal activity by both staff and students is key. Learn what district officials need to know before acting to confront such activity.

Employee Discipline
Review the fundamental requirements of the tenured teacher discipline statute (3020-a) and the noninstructional staff discipline law (Section 75). Learn the steps school districts must take to facilitate the success of their efforts when taking necessary disciplinary action against staff.

Legal Challenges to School Elections and Budget Votes
The outcome of school board elections and budget votes is often a source of appeals to the commissioner of education. Explore the more common types of issues raised in those appeals and the legal requirements affecting resolution of those cases, so that your district can minimize the risk of similar challenges.

Objective Contract Negotiations
Contentious negotiations exist when one or both parties compare current contract benefits with other districts. Examine a process that allows both sides to rationally measure the similarities and differences between contracts benefits with other districts’ benefits. Learn how this processcan effectively diffuse the often erroneous assumption that a neighboring district’s contract provides substantially enhanced salary and benefits.

Open Meetings and FOIL
The work of school boards is public business and, as such, must comply with the state Open Meetings Law and the Freedom of Information Law, or FOIL. Learn how these important laws apply to board members, executive session, personal privacy and retention of records, district communication, and more.

School Board and Superintendent Relations – The Legal Framework
Difficult times heighten the need for an effective collaborative relationship between a school board, as a district’s policy maker, and the school superintendent, as its executive officer. Better understand how law and regulations, and administrative and court decisions define the legal roles and responsibilities that support such a relationship.

Section 504 and Special Education Students
Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 protects children with disabilities separate from the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. Recent amendments may increase the number of Section 504 eligible students. Review the policies and procedures districts must have in place to comply with this law.

Social Media – A New Legal Frontier
Learn the laws and cases that govern a district’s ability to discipline students for off-site Internet activity. Can a district take action to limit blogs or what is posted on them? Bring your own experiences to discuss.

Special Education Update
Review how the past year’s legislative and regulatory changes, and administrative and court decisions have affected school district responsibilities for educating students with disabilities. What are on the challenges ahead and what do school boards need to know to facilitate compliance with this area of law and serve the needs of disabled students?

Student and Staff Discipline in the Digital Age
Student and staff use of e-mail, social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace offer districts both opportunities and challenges when gathering information on school-related misconduct. Under what circumstances can districts use such information without violating an individual’s First Amendment rights?

Teacher Tenure – Something Old, Something New
Examine new regulations that affect both the tenure and seniority rights of teachers placed on special assignment such as teacher trainers, subject area coaches and curriculum specialists, and a district’s ability to make such assignments. Also review the rules affecting staff reductions and tenure, and seniority in general.

Unfunded Post-Employment Benefits – Finding a Legal Solution
What can districts do to reduce their unfunded liability for post-employment benefits such as retiree health insurance? Learn about current restrictions impeding the ability of districts to reduce their liability in this area, and possible strategies for addressing the problem.

Building Social/Emotional Competencies
Early developmental behaviors follow children throughout school and beyond. Learn how schools can help shape these behaviors bycreating a respectful and safe environment, and teaching academic and social-emotional competencies through a system called The Responsive Classroom.

Economic Literacy for High Schoolers
Quality teachers delivering quality content can improve student performance in Regents economics. Explore proposals for improving the teaching of this important course for high school seniors.

Emphasizing the Whole Child in Your District
Preparing students for success in the 21st century requires a focus on the whole child with an enriched curriculum. Define the “whole child,” identify strengths and deficiencies within your district, share successful practices, and develop an action plan to address one area for improvement.

Every Child a Fluent Reader
Port Jefferson has used a series of early literacy approaches, including the Columbia Teachers College Reading and Writing Project, Total Literacy, Response to Intervention (RtI), Class Size Reduction, and Foreign Language in the Elementary School (FLES) to ensure success for every learner. Learn how to use such approaches in your district to make every child a fluent reader.

Improving Minority Student Self-Esteem
Explore strategies to improve the self-esteem of minority students by emphasizing strengths and downplaying limitations, and to help students become intellectually, socially and economically productive citizens.

Opening Doors: Motivating High School Students and Reducing Drop Outs
Engaging high school students in learning is a constant challenge facing secondary educators and administrators. Rigorous technology alternatives have become paramount in the educational landscape. Get a demonstration of CompassLearning’s Odyssey, one such solution.

Overrepresentation of Minority Male Students in Special Education
“Acting out” can be caused by social, emotional and other cultural factors. Learn techniques to better understand the racial, cultural, social and ethnic background of these students to avoid inappropriate tracking.

Project-Based Learning and State Standards: Conflict or Coexistence?
Examine the approach to teaching and learning used in Tech Valley High School, a regional high school run by two BOCES. Understand the school’s project-based curriculum, how it relates to the state’s learning standards and connections to the region’s businesses and community agencies. Check the results after two years of operation.

Service Learning: Tomorrow’s Community Leaders
K-12 students can be the leading force that make the difference in our communities, if they believe in “doing good” with both their hearts and their minds. Lead them to service learning. Learn how service learning can help improve student performance and benefit your community at the same time.

Small Learning Communities to Improve Student Achievement
Small learning communities can make a difference! Get the tools you need to make the transformation, including instructional and classroom changes, building organization, and teacher common planning time activities associated with small learning communities.

Social and Emotional Development and Learning
Experts from the State Education and StateHealth Departments will explain voluntary guidelines for social and emotional development and learning. Learn how these guidelines, prescribed by the Children’s Mental Health Act of 2006, can help schools create calmer and safer school environments, thereby enhancing learning.

Value-Added Data to Improve Student Achievement
Understand how value-added analysis fits with other data to provide a more complete picture of the district’s effectiveness in raising student achievement. Examine the content of web-based reports. Learn how to apply the data to real-life examples and how districts are using this data to drive school improvement efforts for all students.

Working with Minority and Underprivileged Students
Get strategies that staff can use to ensure that the teaching methods are structured appropriately for students regardless of their cultural or social background. Learn how and why constantly stressing high expectations can make a difference for student success.

Google as a Teaching Tool
Google has a lot of great new tools for teachers and students, and they’re online and free. See how your staff can engage students in peer-to-peer learning to share projects assets, write, and edit online and participate in Web 2.0 collaboration. Stressing high expectations can make a difference in student success.

Identifying and Managing Electronic Records
Get a roadmap for identifying and managing your district’s electronic records and data. Examine effective staff training for using, retaining, retrieving, preserving and/or disclosing e-mail and other electronic records. Learn how one district has successfully used an archiving software tool to meet its retrieval and investigatory needs relating to e-mail.

Interactive White Boards
Niagara Falls is about to install interactive white boards in all its schools after piloting them in one of its elementary schools. These boards have become an integral part of the educational toolbox, helping teachers deliver enhanced instruction and engage students. Gain from this district’s experiences. Learn how to effectively integrate the technology for maximum benefit to students.

Knowledge-based Data Visualization
What disaggregated student data is necessary for a knowledge-based model for decisionmaking? How can this be used to create a data visualization to communicates findings and suggest resource and program actions to improve student achievement? Get a visual understanding of a system initially developed for the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA).

School Security Before and After an Emergency
Knowing who has access to your school during a normal school day is important but during an emergency it’s critical. Learn how your district can secure a school during the worst of times using a combination of visitor management credentialing, and comprehensive security and emergency preparedness plans.

Take a Virtual Field Trip
Help your students and staff go beyond distance learning with interactive video communication. Experience how this technology can be used for interactive virtual field trips, professional development and other collaboration opportunities. Take a virtual field trip – destination to be determined!