School Board Trustees Must Be Master Communicators

By Nadine Aarsheim

A School Board's primary responsibility is to serve as the voice of its community. School Board members should have the talent and dedication to doing that.

Board Members must also be committed to proactively reaching out to the community to ascertain what the community wants them to do. Ask your friends and neighbors: do they know who is currently on the Larkspur Corte Madera School Board? Have School Board members reached out to them to seek their opinion? If they have attempted to contact a Board member, did they get a timely and substantive response from the trustee they contacted? Do they know what issues the School Board is currently working on, and how to get information about those issues? If the answers you get to these questions indicate room for improvement, you may want to consider the candidates' ability and willingness to actively engage with the community when you consider your choice for School Board trustee.

As an estate planning attorney, a big part of my practice involves taking complicated legal concepts and translating them into a form that is easy for my clients to apply to their own situations. As a School Board member, I can help the Board break down the issues our District faces into essential elements that community members can easily access.

My ability and desire to improve the communication between the Board and the community was demonstrated during the design process for the Cove School that took place between 2011 - 2013. During this time, I reached out to fellow parents and teachers in order to bring them information about the design process for the Cove School that was not forthcoming from the Board. I established a Google group as a forum where parents, teachers, and community members could share information and ideas, and I used email as a means to let fellow parents know when and where meetings were taking place, and what was on the agenda. As a School Board member, I will continue my mission to open up communication between community members and the Board so that the Board can better serve its role as liaison between the Administration and the community.