NYSSBA creates School Board Appreciation Week

On Board Online • April 17, 2017

By Eric D. Randall
Editor-in-Chief

To welcome newly elected members and honor the service of sitting board members, NYSSBA plans to hold 12 free receptions throughout the state during the last week in June.

The events will be called "School Board Appreciation Week."

"We want to develop personal relationships with individual school board members, and give them an opportunity to network with each other," said NYSSBA Executive Director Timothy G. Kremer. "While we offer many training events across the state throughout the year, these will be social events."

Board incumbents - especially retiring board members - are welcome, as are superintendents, clerks, other administrators and representatives of local school boards associations.

"We will also make a special effort to invite the board members-elect to bring along their families," Kremer said. "We hope to fill these rooms with the extended NYSSBA family."

The events are being managed by NYSSBA's Member Relations Department, which was created in July 2016. Venues are listed below.

"Primarily, this will be an opportunity to make sure that newly elected school board members are aware that NYSSBA exists and is eager to serve them," said Barry Entwistle, director of member relations. "And we also want to thank school board members for their service and express support for them in their mission to improve public education."

"Any remarks will be brief, I promise!" Kremer said. "We want to give people an opportunity to interact in a relaxed setting."

Each event will last two hours. Hors d'oeuvres and refreshments will be served.

The last week in June was chosen because that is when "the torch is being passed and the locally elected board is about to be reconstituted," Kremer said.

The events were first announced in an email. Since then, two questions arose.

The first involved the scope of the celebrations. NYSSBA announced that a different event called School Board Recognition Week, traditionally held in October, would move to June. But several board clerks called to NYSSBA's attention that their district regularly has celebrations involving faculty and students during School Board Recognition Week, which would not be possible during the last week in June. In a follow-up email, NYSSBA stated that it plans to maintain support for School Board Recognition Week in October in addition to School Board Appreciation Week in June.

"October will remain the traditional period when local communities, including staff and students, will be encouraged to sponsor activities of their own design to recognize their local school boards," Kremer said. "NYSSBA will continue to provide a toolkit for the October Recognition Week events."

Second, one person questioned whether a NYSSBA event would compete with a local school board association dinner also held in June. "We were careful about the dates we chose, and there are no conflicts with local school boards association events," Kremer said. "School board members should be able to attend all the events in their areas - and we encourage them to do so! I think any event that gets school board members from different districts together is a good thing, whether sponsored by NYSSBA or a local association."