Online Learning

Whether you just won your election or have been serving your community for some time now, Fundamentals of School Board Service will provide you with both a broad overview of your role in school district governance and explore key aspects of school board work. Topics include school board responsibilities, school district structure, effective school board meetings, legal considerations and much more. This course is full of the “just-in-time” information and skills you will need to serve with confidence.

This course is designed to teach the necessary skills and knowledge for establishing policy. You will learn how to identify common policy errors, develop procedures, oversee policy and use the Policymaker's Checklist.

The first portion of this course deals with the current State School Aid Act and its importance to and future impact on local boards of education. The second portion explores development and monitoring phases of a local district's budget and includes some of the pitfalls that board members might face. Please Note: It is strongly recommended that this course be taken before signing up for CBAs 215, 310 or 315 in order to have an understanding of school finance fundamentals and to maximize your learning experience.

The school law course gives board members an overview of the school code governing Michigan school districts. Important issues like general liability, conflict of interest, administrators' contracts and current trends and controversies in school law are covered.

The forces that drive changes in curriculum, instruction and assessment in schools are here in the form of global competition and an education gap never before seen in the United States. This introductory course will provide board members with an understanding of the changing world, components of an effective curriculum delivery system, and the board's role in curriculum, instruction and assessment in order to enable student achievement.

Learn the basics of building strong community support for schools and education. You will identify internal and external audiences, learn how to establish a key communicator network and develop strategies for communicating effectively.

Board members will become acquainted with the nature and language of labor relations and public schools. The relationship of the Public Employment Relations Act to the Michigan Employment Relation Commission will be emphasized.

In this course, participants will get a detailed account of the legislative process, learn lobbying techniques and get an overview of current legislative issues. Upon completion, board members will be ready and able to take legislative advocacy into their own hands and embrace the role of citizen lobbyist.

Education leaders are inundated with new mandates, reporting requirements and unprecedented pressures to significantly elevate student achievement. In order to effectively measure school district success, data must drive how boards of education make decisions. Data can be found virtually everywhere, but accessing the right data, understanding how to use it and supporting their administration are big uncertainties facing board members. This introductory course will provide board members with clarification about the different types of data for the strategic, tactical, administrative and operational roles of boards and districts.

This course will explore the ethical conduct required of board members who serve local communities through an interactive session using case studies and small group discussions. The class will review the MASB booklet, A Code of Ethical Relationships (provided), and discuss the implications the code has for board members and superintendents.

This foundation-building course will help school boards use data effectively in their governance role. Data is not a trend, it’s a necessity, and boards must be able to use data to learn what decisions and actions are needed after considering data, how to determine the effectiveness of their work and the progress being made to impact achievement. School funding, state and federal mandates and community support all demand high levels of accountability using data. Participants will also learn how data can be organized and presented in a clear format that the public and other stakeholders can understand.

Teacher quality is a national issue with virtually every state discussing how to evaluate teachers and determine their impact on student achievement. No matter the discussions, we all agree that students must have access to highly effective teachers. This course is all about teacher quality and participants will learn the difference between teacher qualifications and teacher effectiveness, what growth data says about teacher effectiveness, how boards can use data to determine equitable access to effective teachers, and how boards can align their decisions to improve teacher quality and access. This course also addresses how to engage your stakeholders in the teacher quality discussion.

With the crucial conversations about students graduating high school being college and career ready, this course takes board members on a data journey to help achieve their goals of preparing all students for the real world. This course covers the “must-know” topics of preparing high school graduates for the 21st century and the data that can be used to determine readiness for postsecondary education and good jobs. There’s a vast array of data to navigate through and this course will highlight what data is needed to serve as early indicators that students are on track for graduation or in danger of dropping out. Postsecondary data will also be highlighted that can shed light on PreK-12 quality, policies and practices that boards can develop to assure all students graduate qualified for success.

Data dashboards are all the buzz—in businesses and schools—to help present and monitor data that allows for effective tracking and analysis of student achievement and other data. Data dashboards can help to inform school boards about the value of data in governance, policy, budgeting and achievement. Learn information on how districts can create a data dashboard for school boards. This course will also cover tips on how to use key data to monitor student achievement and assistance to boards in the use of key data for directing policy level decisions will also be covered. Participants will explore sample dashboards to help boards understand the data and arrive at strategies for monitoring progress and improving district performance.

No, all MASB’s online classes are designed to be accessed at your convenience. The class will walk you through content, activities and reflective practice at your own pace.

Classes take an average of 60-90 minutes to complete (CBA 101 averages 90-120 minutes).

Self-paced courses completed in the Learning Portal will be posted to your transcript immediately upon completion.