Future Ready Schools (FRS), an initiative of the Alliance for Excellent Education (All4Ed), today announced a new program for school board members. Supported with funding from Konica Minolta Business Solutions, U.S.A., Inc. (Konica Minolta), FRS-School Boards will provide a suite of helpful tools and free resources for school board members to connect with their communities, support a culture of innovation within their schools, and promote a vision for teaching and learning that is student-centered, forward-thinking, and designed to meet the vast needs of today’s learners.
“School board members are the steady hand at the wheel driving school districts forward,” said Deb Delisle, president and CEO of the Alliance for Excellent Education. “They set the vision, goals, and priorities for the district and its schools and help create the conditions to improve student outcomes and help district leaders, school leaders, and educators grow professionally.”
FRS-School Boards joins FRS program strands already underway for district leaders, principals, instructional coaches, librarians, and technology leaders.
“Our alliance with Future Ready Schools creates amazing working potential for our business and for schools across our nation and we look forward to the impact it will have on students,” said Kay Fernandez, Senior Vice President, Marketing, Konica Minolta. “The relationships we build through partnerships like this are vital as we continually innovate to advance technology to support the next generation of leaders.”
A key component of the program is the FRS-School Boards Framework which will help school board members forge a visionary and systemic path to support long-term academic, financial, and political sustainability. Included in the framework are eight “gears” focused on personalized instruction for students; ongoing and job-embedded learning; robust infrastructure; strategic fiscal planning; community partnerships; the use of data to transform instruction and support students; support for anywhere, anytime learning; and collaborative leadership.
For example, school board members who participate in FRS-School Boards can access helpful tools and resources embedded in the School Boards Framework to
—support and communicate a learner-centric vision that provides personal and authentic learning experiences and supports social-emotional development for all students;
—adopt curriculum, aligned to state standards, that ensures deeper learning outcomes connected to real-world applications, promotes positive digital citizenship, and prepares learners for future success;
—ensure equity in access to high-quality devices and the bandwidth needed to support student learning at school and at home;
—adopt budgets that align with strategic and tactical plans while working to eliminate expenses that no longer support the district’s vision; and
—adopt clear policies and support practices on the use of student data that ensure high levels of data privacy and security and that adhere to state and federal laws.
FRS, which celebrated its five-year anniversary in November, helps school districts develop the human and technological capacity needed to personalize student learning and prepare students for college, a career, and citizenship. FRS is one of the largest networks of school districts in the country. More than 3,400 school districts’ superintendents—representing more than 20 million students—have signed the Future Ready District Pledge, committing to personalize learning by tailoring instruction to students’ strengths and needs while engaging them in challenging, standards-based academic content, with the help of effective digital learning strategies.
More information on Future Ready Schools-School Boards is available at futureready.org/schoolboards.
