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Kentucky School Boards AssociationFall, 1997Difficult Ground: Community Leaders and School Board Service in KentuckyFor the Kentucky School Boards Association and the Partnership for Kentucky Schools, we conducted focus groups with community leaders and interviews with present and former school board members around the state to determine their views on school board service and to develop strategies for encouraging more community leaders to run for school board positions. The results suggest that school board leadership is a community challenge, one that is presently being treated as an individual challenge. The amount of work one individual school board member must do in order to perform well is overwhelming for most people. In addition, school board members assume a burden of negative presumptions – many experienced school board members told us that they find their fellow citizens presume they are doing the wrong thing. The report suggests that school board representation would become more feasible for more community leaders if community groups actively assisted school board members both with their elective campaigns and with the work that must be done after election. The full report from these focus groups, Difficult Ground: Community Leaders and School Board Service in Kentucky, 1997, is available here in pdf format (80 KB). Back to the Partnership for Kentucky Schools January, 1991Shortly after the passage of the Kentucky Education Reform Act (KERA), the most comprehensive education reform legislation in the United States, we conducted focus groups for the Kentucky School Boards Association that aimed at determining Kentucky citizens' levels of awareness of KERA, their responses to it, and their opinions on the role of school boards. 
Visit other examples of our work in the areas of community change and citizen engagement and school improvement. |
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