Meeting the Moment with Sustainability

Our Collective Power (OCP), the annual school board conference run by School Board Partners , is in a few days, and I cannot wait. Coming up on our fourth year, I have been thinking a lot about how this conference (that I personally like to think of as more of a homecoming) began and how far we’ve come.?

OCP was crafted during the pandemic—a national crisis that did not have a unified state-level response for the resulting challenges to our education system. Since education is a state right instead of a federal one, every state had a different response. Every school system was doing its own thing, which just exacerbated the catastrophic effects of this terrible global pandemic. There was no federal guidance on how to meet the moment, so we decided to meet it ourselves.?

We invented our own playbook with OCP by bringing together governance leaders of all kinds—from elected school board members to appointed state board members to charter board members. If you had anything to do with governance in education, you were invited to meet the moment along with us (obviously via Zoom that first year).

Since then, we have expanded not only our venue—this year, we’re meeting in the beautiful city of San Antonio—but we have also expanded our mission. Because we realized that while a specific governance tool kit is necessary and vital for a school board member to have, it isn’t worth much if they don’t have the resources to sustain it.?

According to Ballotpedia, only 38% of school board members indicate that they plan to run for reelection over the next two to four years, which is down some 30 points since 2016. This means that there will be a great resignation of School Board members, which will create a trickle-down effect for principals and teachers, fostering instability in the greater educational workforce, which is, quite frankly, something our kids cannot afford.?

There are good people we need in those seats who are quitting left and right because the role has become less sustainable—so we made an intentional decision to include sustainability practices in OCP. Because when it comes to training school board members, you can’t just teach governance content, you must also train up leaders and make sure they have the skills to sustain their well-being in the role.??

We began by asking questions like, What does their self-care routine look like? Are they taking care of themselves? How can we give them the tools to sustain in the role? And then we partnered with James “Dominic” Malone and Arise Wellness to conduct self-care sessions at OCP, such as meditation, mindfulness practices for leaders, massages, sound bowl sessions, yoga, self-care planning, and other healing opportunities so that our school board members can learn how to take care of themselves so they can better take care of our children.?

Our school board members—particularly leaders of color—need to find a 3rd or 4th gear to sit in their role and have what they need to maintain a sustained impact. Going to OCP and participating in School Board Partners’ programming as a whole is a way to do that—a way to meet the moment and then sustain it.?

____________________________________________________________________________

Ethan Ashley is the Co-Founder and Co-CEO of School Board Partners and a former president and current member of the Orleans Parish School Board. Ethan is also an attorney with a law degree from Howard University, a fervent advocate for racial equity, youth justice, and civil rights, and a father and husband. He has held pivotal roles at esteemed institutions such as the Department of Justice Civil Rights Division, the Urban League of Louisiana, the ADL, and the Washington Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights and Urban Affairs.