LTISD Info

Their lessons are board training sessions, some of which will teach them to put aside personal agendas, support their superintendents, and embrace the idea that board members and the superintendents make up a team. Their teachers are often education consultants, mostly former superintendents and trustees.

“You want to do everything you can to make your superintendent successful,” one such consultant told the Plano school board recently. “Governance is hard work.”

Though the class time is state-mandated, the content is not. So, it’s unclear just how many Texas trustees will hear the message the Plano trustees got. But plenty will, former school board members say, and the results aren’t always in the public’s best interest.

They say the mind-set encouraged by the training can squelch public debate, hurt accountability, and discourage trustees from working for the voters in their geographic districts.

“The training is designed to help make it easier for the superintendents to function,” said Fiona Sigalla, a former trustee in the Grapevine-Colleyville school district.

Ron Price, a former Dallas ISD trustee said: “It’s a great program to train boards how to be a rubber stamp. But it’s not a good program for board members to represent your constituents.”