Creating a Strong Relationship Between Your School Board and Administration

By Dr. Don Raleigh, Superintendent, Pryor Public Schools

Educators recognize that a strong relationship between the school board and administration can create a positive learning environment in any district.

What if multiple districts that have strong board/administrator relationships come together to share ideas and advocate for public education? This idea is coming to fruition in northeastern Oklahoma resulting from the leadership of Fred Sordahl, President of the Pryor Board of Education.

While attending the National School Board Association’s annual convention in San Antonio in 2018, Mr. Sordahl attended a session that discussed how school districts were working together in Texas to advocate for public education. This idea resonated with our board members and administrators as we were entrenched in the Oklahoma teacher walkout during that same time.

Creating a coalition of board members, administrators and ultimately teachers resonated with administrators from our area and very quickly, our group grew from a few districts in Mayes County to cover more than six counties representing almost 300,000 constituents. This group became the Northeast Oklahoma Public Education Alliance in the spring of 2019. Advocating for quality public education for ALL students in Oklahoma and strong local control aligns with the goals of CCOSA and the OSSBA.

Too often, administrators work in their own districts, only occasionally get together with other district administrators to share ideas, and very rarely are board members and teachers involved in those meetings.

Advocacy and visiting with legislators has become one of the required and important roles of superintendents over the last decade. Immediately this became a shared role through this organization.

We invited numerous legislators from our area to share with us, but ultimately to create what we wanted to be an open dialogue moving forward. We set up scheduled times for each district to have this dialogue and to promote issues and ideas that supported public education. While this group may create more meetings for everyone involved, it was quickly evident that this organization was a powerful way to share ideas and advocacy for everyone involved.

With each district dealing with the challenges of the pandemic, we are planning to use this same approach of sharing ideas and innovations to help all of our districts navigate this challenging time.

As we move into the legislative session, I recommend you have discussions in your area to see if something like the Northeast Oklahoma Public Education Alliance could work for your area. Working together makes all of us stronger and helps public education across our state.