Interview with Justin King with Michigan Association of School Boards
Announcer: Welcome to Inside Michigan Education, a weekly show featuring interviews with community leaders, school administrators, school business officials, and individuals who are passionate about the future of Michigan Education. Now, here is your host for Inside Michigan Education, Rob Huisingh.
Rob Huisingh: Welcome to Inside Michigan Education, this week we are joined in the Foxbright Podcast Studio by Mr. Justin King. Justin King is the Executive Director of the MASB, that's the Michigan Association of School Boards. Welcome Justin, it's a pleasure to have you on our show.
Justin King: Thank you. It's a pleasure to be here.
Rob Huisingh: Justin, please take a few minutes to tell our listeners a little bit about yourself and how did you come to be in the position of Executive Director.
Justin King: Well, I've been in this position in Michigan for the past 20 years, and my background really is in association management. I am originally from Oregon and I have a law degree from University of Oregon and I chose to use that in education association management. So I was on the staff for the Oregon School Boards Association for five-and-a-half years. I was Executive Director of the Nebraska Associations of School Board for eight and, as I said, I've been here for 20.
Rob Huisingh: A lot of experience. Please tell us a little bit about the Michigan Association of School Boards.
Justin King: Michigan Association of School Boards is an organization that was formed by school board members about 55 or 56 years ago, and as all school boards associations are, it was formed because people wanted to have a united voice to represent them in the legislative process. That's certainly not the only thing that we do, but it was the first thing and our membership expects us to try to balance the interest of urban and rural and large and small and talk about school finance in a way that it would provide equitable financing for education across the Board.
The second thing that school board associations, including our own, do primarily is board member development and training, and we have a Certified Board Member Award Program at MASB. There are seven levels of it, believe it or not, but the first level of certification is 30 hours of in-class training for board members about the basic kinds of things that all school board members need to know to be effective leaders.
Rob Huisingh: Now, your own board is comprised of regional representatives. How does that work?
Justin King: Yeah, MASB has a 19-member Board of Directors and they are elected from the regions of the State. So we are covered throughout the State, and then they elect -- it's a corporate form of directorship, so they elect their own officers from themselves. The general membership -- I mean they weighed in, of course, when they elect the people to the Board. So my current President is Mike Rochholz from the Schoolcraft, my President-Elect is Paula Saari from Marquette. So you can see how we do there.
Rob Huisingh: Now, I understand that training is obviously one of the most important pillars that you're focused on. Can you help us to understand -- I guess there's something as many as 17 states that actually require for their school boards. Talk to us little bit more about that role that you play in that process.
Justin King: Well, to go back to, I talked about the Certified Board Member Award Program. We designed it after I came to the State, so it would have been probably in 1990 or so. The idea was that we wanted to put together a solid program of training and development for board members. So if the legislature here ever turned around and said, "We want to mandate it." I would be able to legitimately go before the committee and say, you really don't need to do that in Michigan because we've got this voluntary program and X percent, and I can tell you that nearly two thirds of the board members in the State have taken advantage of the training program that we have. So you don't need to do that.
Rob Huisingh: Okay. Additionally, the MASB is in support of school funding reform, and the organization is joined what appears to be the 'K-16 Coalition for Michigan's Future', as well as the 'Affordable Benefits Coalition', the ABC. Can you tell us little bit about these partnership groups and what you're focused on?
Justin King: Well, really any one organization blowing in the wind by themselves, whether it's education or anything else, is not going to be effective in trying to get their point of view across in terms of getting legislation passed. So we form the coalitions with the idea that -- from a K-12 standpoint, and really K-16, that we need to have a strong education system in the State in order for our youngsters to go through and be either prepared from the K-12 standpoint to go on to higher education or perhaps into the business world, and anything that's going to help fund that is something that we can unite behind. We break down a bit when it comes to funding formulas because not all funding affects everybody equally. There's something that people are probably hearing about today called the '2x Approach' which would bring the lower funded districts up faster to the ones that are currently higher funded. There's a rub there between people, as you would expect, the districts that are on one end of that versus the other.
Rob Huisingh: Sure. Justin, do you believe there's a strong relationship between school boards and high student achievement? Talk to us about that.
Justin King: Well, I do, and actually there are studies that would show that particularly with respect to school board and superintendent relationships that that's kind of the key. You'll say, well why and how can you prove it? Well, we've taken a look at the districts across the country, there have been a couple of studies that show where board and superintendent are pulling the wagon in the same direction in the same way, and they're a team. That kind of permeates throughout the community, and people feel good about it and kids tend to be in an atmosphere in their buildings where they're learning better. The opposite is also true, however; and that's the sad part where there's antagonism going on. That also permeates in the community and somehow rather the atmosphere isn't as conducive to learning. You can show that with test scores.
Rob Huisingh: Is there anything unique that our listeners might not be aware of?
Justin King: Yeah, I would say, there's something that we have in Michigan that to my knowledge no other state does, we have the Educational Alliance of Michigan. What that is, it's not an organizational alliance per se. People sometimes perceive it to be that but it really -- in order to be part of the alliance you have to be the CEO of a statewide education related organization. The uniqueness in Michigan is that the cast of organizations that you would expect are part of it, both the MEA and AFT Michigan, both unions, ourselves, the Michigan Association of School Administrators, the Elementary and Secondary Principals Associations, the PTA, but then we go beyond that and we've got the Michigan Business Leaders for Education Excellence which is sponsored by the State Chamber of Commerce. We also have both public and private colleges representated at the table, we have the charter schools. We meet the CEOs of those organizations once a month for three hours, and it's kind of an open agenda. The idea is relationships make a difference. We talk about the issues of the time. We cannot take a public position unless we have a 100% vote.
Rob Huisingh: Fascinating.
Justin King: There's one -- I know one of your previous guests was Jim Ballard from the Secondary Principals Association, and they provided the leadership on the school reform stuff, and the Alliance took a position. So Jim happened to be our chair that year and when he was able to go to the legislature and say "the Ed. Alliance is behind this", I think it made a difference.
Rob Huisingh: That's a pretty significant poll.
Justin King: He was a big deal.
Rob Huisingh: Yeah. From your perspective in taking this opportunity to speak to the school superintendents and secondary school principals and maybe in fact people that could get the message out to their school board, is there any one particular message that you would really like to convey to them?
Justin King: Sure. I kind of touched on it before, and I think the most important thing is our relationships. I think we've got to work hard at that, we've got to listen more, superintendents have to listen to the board, the board has to listen to the superintendent; I mean this is basic stuff. There are no surprises, there needs to be an agenda that is developed so the whole community knows and understands what it is at their school, whether it's the size of Grand Rapids or a smaller district in rural Michigan, the community needs to be behind it.
School board members are the elected representatives of the community, they're not above them, they're part of them, and they need to reach out to people in the community constantly to touch bases to make sure that the kind of policies that they're setting at the local board table, reflect the desires of the people in the community for education.
Rob Huisingh: If a school superintendent was interested in having the school board go through training, how would you recommend that a school superintendent approaches this position?
Justin King: Well, I think they should be -- I mean they should advocate. First of all, we would say that there should be some budget money in every school district budget that is there for board member training and development. The superintendent needs to have some confidence that -- and I can tell you and your listening audience that this is true -- that if they take training, part of what's being said to board members is understand that your role is to set policy and hire the superintendent.
Incidentally, MASB has a superintendent search service that we help Boards with, as well as a policy service, as well as unfortunately labor relation service that does contract bargaining. But they need to understand that the classes that we teach say, be policy makers, be communicators in your community, hire a good superintendent and hold that individual accountable for carrying things out, but don't stick your nose into their business. They're the managers and you're the policy people. I think it's a trust relationship that we are talking about, and superintendents need to trust that Board members can be, I guess, instructed to and understand and keep their place as policy setters and not get into administration.
Rob Huisingh: Justin, I want to thank you for taking the time to be with us and for sharing insights, and for everything that you are doing today with the Michigan School Board Association. Thank you.
Justin King: My pleasure, thanks so much for having me.
Rob Huisingh: If you would like to contact Justin King and the MASB, he can be reached by telephone at (517) 327-5900. Again, that telephone number is (517) 327-5900, or you can visit them online at their website www.masb.org. Again, that URL is www.masb.org. Until next week this is Rob Huisingh with Inside Michigan Education.
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