January 14, 2023: Board of Education Special Meeting (Board Study Session)

On a Saturday morning in January 2023 the Chino Valley Unified board met for a study session with one substantive item: a governance workshop. The adopted minutes record no action and no audience comments 1. No recording or transcript of the session is in the archive, so the signed one-page minutes are the record of what happened.

Opening business

The agenda, posted January 9, set the session for 8:00 a.m. at the District Office, 5130 Riverside Drive in Chino 2. President Sonja Shaw called the study session to order at 8:00 a.m. with Bridge, Cruz, Monroe, Na, and Shaw present, and led the Pledge of Allegiance 1. (The board's January 19, 2023 minutes give the other members' full names as Don Bridge and James Na 3 and Jonathan Monroe 4; Andrew Cruz signed this meeting's minutes as Clerk 1.) James Na left the meeting at 9:30 a.m. 1.

Under comments from the audience on items on the agenda, the minutes record none 1.

The governance workshop

The minutes say the board "met with Joel Shapiro, who facilitated a discussion on governance." They list five topics 1:

• Board adopted governance standards
• examining roles and responsibilities of Board members and superintendent
• reviewing and evaluating Board meeting format
• considering existing Board protocols
• reviewing Board self-evaluation instrument

That list is the whole account. The minutes record no conclusion on any of the five subjects and no follow-up item, and President Shaw adjourned the study session at 11:41 a.m. 1.

The district's July 21, 2022 agenda had listed a 2022-23 consultant agreement with Joel Shapiro whose stated purpose was "executive coaching for Superintendent and Board consultation services for Superintendent evaluation process," running from July 1, 2022 to June 30, 2023 at a per-rate-sheet amount 5. The minutes do not say whether the workshop was held under that agreement.

What the board's own documents say about these subjects

The minutes do not say which documents the board looked at. The district's bylaws and their exhibits do cover several of the listed topics:

• Governance standards. Bylaw 9005, Governance Standards (adopted September 18, 2008), says an effective board should "Govern within board-adopted policies and procedures" and "Periodically evaluate its own effectiveness" 6.
• Protocols. Exhibit 9000, Board Protocols (revised September 5, 2019), sets out principles and protocols for bringing up new ideas or agenda items, agenda questions asked before a board meeting, the consent calendar, board electronic communications and requests for information 7.
• Self-evaluation. Bylaw 9400, Board Self-Evaluation (revised September 21, 2017), calls for an annual board self-evaluation and has the board, with the superintendent's help, settle on "an evaluation method or instrument" each year. It allows a facilitator and says "Any discussion involving the Board's self-evaluation shall be conducted in open session." 8

Afterward

At the next regular meeting, on January 19, 2023, the minutes record that President Shaw "spoke about the Board governance study session that took place last weekend" 4. In the recording of those remarks she described the session, as captioned, as "really just to learn protocol so we do our job well" and also "to see if we want to implement any changes as the board to our meetings." She said, as captioned, that "a couple suggestions" had been "brought forth" 9 and that the public would have the opportunity "to be able to speak on those things that were suggested" 10.

The minutes of this session were printed in the February 2, 2023 agenda packet 11. The board approved the minutes of the January 14, 2023 special meeting on its February 2 consent calendar 12. The archive's copy is the signed version, with signature lines for Sonja Shaw, President, and Andrew Cruz, Clerk, and recorded by Patricia Kaylor, Administrative Secretary, Board of Education 1.

This is an independent, community-maintained summary of public records and is not affiliated with or endorsed by Chino Valley Unified School District.