The role and function of school counselors remains a consistent source of concern in the school counseling profession. Aligning school counseling activities with comprehensive school counseling practice is a way to standardize the profession. Creating a school board policy for counseling is a strategy to gain support for and institutionalize school counseling practices. The purpose of this dissertation study was to produce two manuscripts related to the role and function of school counselors and school board policies for counseling. The researcher investigated school board members' (N = 169) and school counselors' (N = 341) perceptions of school board knowledge of comprehensive school counseling program activities, school board prioritization of those activities, and school board adoption of policies and actions related to school counseling. The school board perception survey and school counselor perception survey were modified versions of the School Counselor Activity Rating Scale. This research suggested that school counselors were more likely to rate school board members' knowledge of and level of priority for school counseling activities lower than school board members rated themselves. This research also suggested that there was a direct relationship between school board members' knowledge of and level of priority they assign to school counseling activities. / Graduation date: 2013

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Miami University, Dept. of Educational Leadership, 2008. / Title from second page of PDF document. Includes bibliographical references (p. 116-122).

No description available.

The purpose of this study was to develop guidelines for small school divisions in Virginia to use in preparing an orientation program which would meet the needs of the new school board members. These guidelines addressed state and local concerns which had been identified through the review of literature and a questionnaire which was completed by superintendents and school board members from small school divisions in Virginia. The questionnaire was distributed to all superintendents and school board members from school divisions with fewer than five thousand students. The contents of the guidelines were determined by those items which were identified as being essential by 50 percent or more of at least one of the respondent groups. The results from this study indicated that school board members and superintendents do agree on the majority of items that were essential to an orientation program for new school board members. Thirty-eight of the sixty-nine items were regarded as essential by both respondent groups. There were eight areas in which the superintendents and school board members disagreed. These areas were also included in the guidelines. As a result of this study a set of curriculum guidelines was developed which would assist small Virginia school divisions in preparing an orientation program for new school board members. The ultimate aim of these guidelines was to improve the effectiveness of the new school board member. / Ed. D.

This investigation was concerned with the relationships between the superintendent of schools, the board of education, and the local teachers' professional organization in Tucson School District One for the period 1941-1978. Because it was the largest school district in the state of Arizona, as well as one of the largest in the United States, School District One may be considered a microcosm of many older school districts throughout the country. Many problems encountered by District One for the first time during the late 1960s and 1970s had been experienced by other large school districts in earlier decades. The relationships between the school board, superintendents, and the local teacher organization moved through three distinct phases in the years covered by this study. The first phase was a period of consensus during the years when Robert D. Morrow was superintendent of the school district. The second phase, under the administration of Morrow's successor, Thomas L. Lee, was one of transition. The harmonious relationships between the superintendent, trustees, and teachers' organization began to become strained. The third phase, under Wilbur Lewis, Lee's successor, was characterized by conflict and ended in a teacher strike in 1978. During the years 1941-1978, the superintendents' relationships with both the school board and the teacher association changed from that of close cooperation to one of increasing hostility. Among the school board members themselves, little effective dissent existed prior to 1972. In that year, the first of two major critics of the school trustees was elected to office. When she was joined on the board in 1975 by the second dissenter, the community realized that the era of cooperation and quiet disagreement was at an end. The local teachers' organization, the Tucson Education Association (TEA), began in 1917 as little more than a social and educational arm of the school district. As the teacher groups nationally became more militant in the 1960s, the TEA developed a more aggressive attitude towards educational and professional conditions in Tucson. In 1978, relationships within the school district had deteriorated to such a degree that two of the most dramatic incidents in the school district's history occurred: the teacher strike in October, and the resignation of the superintendent the following December. Years later, the effects of these two events could still be observed.

ABSTRACT SCHOOL BOARD TAXING AUTHORITY IN VIRGINIA By Leon T. Johnson, Ph.D. A Dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Public Policy and Administration at Virginia Commonwealth University. Virginia Commonwealth University, 2009 Dr. William C. Bosher, Jr. Distinguished Professor of Public Policy and Education The purpose of this study is to determine to what degree local government officials in Virginia support fiscal autonomy for locally elected School Boards in the state. Currently School Boards in Virginia do not have the ability to raise their own revenues and must depend on the local City Council or Board of Supervisors to appropriate school funding each year. Many more states in the nation allow local School Boards to raise their own revenues than not, and some would argue that Virginia’s system is an inferior form of local government having a negative effect on K-12 education in the state. Others would argue that Virginia’s current system works quite well and to give taxing authority to local School Boards would degrade the quality of K-12 education in the state. To set the national context for this question a comparative survey was done of all fifty state systems in the nation to learn the differences between state systems for funding K-12 education. Second, a survey was conducted of 1,782 Virginia public officials whose professional lives would be affected by a change to allow local School Boards to raise their own revenue. These officials were asked a variety of questions the answers to which tell us whether they view fiscal autonomy for School Boards as progress. Finally, statistical analyses are performed on the responses to the survey using the public officials’ positions and their region of the state as variables. Through this statistical analysis we are able to determine whether position or region of the state have a significant affect on answers to the survey questions.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2002. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 111-117). Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2002. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 111-117). Also available on the Internet.

This dissertation analyzes the effects of Latino immigration on the representation of Latinos and African-Americans on local school boards and attempts to explain under what conditions Latino immigrants provoke opposition among whites. I consider two measures of representation based on representative bureaucracy—the membership of Latinos and African-Americans on school boards and bias in the responsiveness of white school board members toward these two groups. Whites as the major racial group in the U.S. have been the subject of much intergroup relations research focusing on competition for scarce resources, perceived threat and group biases (e.g., Evans and Giles, 1986; Giles and Evans, 1985, 1986; Esses, Jackson and Armstrong, 1998), and I also focus on their racial behaviors as voters in school board elections and as school board members. I consider Latino immigration in this research because emerging evidence suggests that Latino immigration poses a growing threat to whites, leading them to shift their support from Latinos to a countervailing group, such as African-Americans (e.g., Meier and Stewart, 1991; Rocha, 2007). First, I examine whether Latino immigration into a community affects the support of white citizens for Latino or African-American membership on school boards. Second, I examine whether white school board members also are influenced by Latino immigration in their responsiveness to Latino and African-American parents. It is likely that the reactions of whites to Latino immigration are conditioned by their preexisting racial attitudes, so this dissertation also tests competing theories of community racial climate—group threat and group contact. I expect that racial tensions within a community should moderate the influence of Latino immigration on these two forms of Latino and African-American representation. Overall, this dissertation expands the study of representative bureaucracy by combining past research on community racial climates with conditions influencing minority representation. In addition to examining the determinants of passive representation, this dissertation links expectations of the racial behavior of white citizens with the behavior of white school board members by considering the possibility that school board members express “discriminatory intent” (Mendez and Grose, 2014) on non-policy related matters. A better understanding of the determinants of public officials’ personal biases should help to explain the targeting of substantive policy benefits to minorities, which is the focus of much other representative bureaucracy research. While I base my analysis of school board membership on inferences of white voter behavior from aggregate election results, I directly measure white school board member responsiveness using data gathered from a novel randomized field experiment and e-mail audit design. Representative bureaucracy researchers have called for more of this type of individual-level data to help explain minority advocacy (Bradbury and Kellough, 2011).

The purpose of this study was to ascertain how school board members and superintendents in Arizona view their own and each other's role and function in the organization and operation of school systems. A second objective was to determine whether the demographic factor of school district locale (urban or rural) contributes to school boards' and superintendents' perceptions. In Arizona, the rights, responsibilities and discretionary powers to act are all given to local school boards. There is no mention of local superintendents' powers or duties in the Arizona State Statutes. This failure to grant statutory power to the superintendents or to formulate district-level policies for the delineation of duties and responsibilities between the school board and the superintendent has frequently led to conflict in district operation. Sixty-five districts were chosen using stratified random sampling from among all the urban and rural districts in Arizona. The Administrative Role Perception Questionnaire was sent to one board member and to the superintendent in each of the 65 districts. The questionnaire contained 22 items representing seven Task Areas: Curriculum Development, Pupil Services, Teaching Materials, Personnel Administration, School Plant Management, Finance and Budget, and Public Relations. The data were analyzed using a series of t-tests. There was substantial disagreement between board members and superintendents on their role and function in the school system. Board members and superintendents differed significantly on Personnel Administration (p<.01), Curriculum Development (p<.03), Teaching Materials (p<.008), Finance and Budget (p<.05), and Public Relations (p<.002). The widest disagreement in perception of the role and function of school boards and superintendents was found between rural board members and rural superintendents. The widest agreement in perception was found between urban and rural board members and between urban and rural superintendents. This would indicate that board members from both urban and rural areas tend to agree more with each other than they do with superintendents. Superintendents from urban and rural areas also tend to agree more with each other than they do with board members. This study has shown that there is still substantial disagreement between boards of education and superintendents. The disagreement indicates an absence of district policies delineating the duties and responsibilities between boards of education and superintendents. Where such policies do exist, they are apparently widely disregarded. The result is the inability of board members and superintendents either to fully understand or to be allowed to discharge their respective roles and functions within the school system. This study recommends that boards of education and superintendents work to define their respective roles in written policy statements which are as broad as possible and cover every major aspect of school district governance and operation. Boards of education and superintendents should work to enact state laws which delineate the duties of the board of education and those of the superintendent. Boards of education should provide adequate funds annually for school board member and superintendent in-service training designed to facilitate understanding and agreement between board members and superintendents. It is also recommended that boards of education offer their superintendents contracts containing policy statements defining respective roles and allowing for redress if a violation occurs. It is hoped that the findings of this study will encourage school districts to formulate policies for the delineation of duties and responsibilities between the board of education and the superintendent.