Dates Friday, September 18 and Saturday, September 19, 2026
Time 9:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. both days. Please arrive before 9:00 a.m., because we start at 9:00 a.m.
Location Oakland Room, Alameda County Training & Education Center
125 12th Street, Suite 400, Oakland, CA 94607
(510) 272-6467
Tuition $1,000 per person
Included Continental breakfast and lunch both days, and all workshop materials
School systems exist to improve student outcomes. This is the only reason they exist. School boards exist to represent the vision and values of their community in the pursuit of that purpose. Yet most boards spend the great majority of their meeting time on adult inputs that have little connection to what students know and are able to do.
Board members rarely choose this. It is what the calendar, the agenda, and the habits of the job produce when no one has redesigned them. The work of changing it is learnable, and it starts with the board’s own behavior.
The East Bay Regional Workshop is two days of that work. Over sixteen hours, we will guide your board through the five continuous improvement practices that separate boards are focused on improving student outcomes from those who are not.
Who Should Attend
We recommend that governing teams attend together. At no point over the two days will governing teams discuss the current business of their own school system, so a full team can attend together as a learning group. The behaviors that drive improvement are team behaviors, and a single member returning alone carries the whole weight of change.
This workshop is built for:
- School board members, whether newly seated or long serving
- Board chairs and vice chairs
- Superintendents and their cabinet
- Board secretaries and staff who prepare agendas and monitoring reports
- Charter and county board members who govern under the same pressures
- Candidates for school board in the November election
If you are running for a school board seat this November, this workshop will not help you get elected. That is not what it is for. It will, however, mean that if you win you arrive already knowing what the job is, what an effective board does differently, and what your first ninety days could look like. Most new board members spend their first year learning that.
Attending as a full governing team produces the most change. Attending alone still gives you a clear picture of what your board could do differently on Monday.
Agenda
- Why school systems exist, and what follows from that answer
- Inputs, outputs, and outcomes: the distinction that changes agendas
- Focus Mindset
- Clarify Priorities
- Clarify Priorities
- Monitor Progress
- Align Resources
- Communicate Results
- Scoring your board on the Great On Their Behalf Index to set a starting point
- Building your board's first ninety days
Why Attend
Boards that do this work with the support of a Certified Great On Their Behalf Practitioner can move from a starting score near zero to a score above eighty over about two years. Boards that attempt it without that support almost always fall short. The adult behavior changes required are simply too large to sustain alone.
Two days will not complete that journey. It will give your board a shared vocabulary, a realistic starting point, and a specific plan, which is where every board that has made the change began.
Location and Directions
Alameda County Training & Education Center
125 12th Street, Suite 400
Oakland, CA 94607
(510) 272-6467
Register
Tuition is $1,000 per person and includes continental breakfast and lunch both days. Use the quantity selector to register more than one person. Seating is limited to 20 participants, so we recommend that governing teams reserve their seats together.
After you check out, please send us the name, role, school system, and email address of each person you registered so we can prepare their materials. Use the form below.
Registration is subject to our workshop refund policy.
Tell us who is coming
If you have registered, or if you are holding seats for a governing team, please send us your attendee list.
Questions
For questions about the workshop, registration, invoicing a school system, or bringing a workshop to your own region, please write to coach@effectiveschoolboards.com.