The 2012 General Assembly is in full swing, and KSBA staff are working to keep school board members and superintendents in the loop on measures that will impact Kentucky’s schools.
The weekly Legislative Report, produced by the KSBA Governmental Relations team, is e-mailed to all board members (those whose e-mail addresses have been shared) and superintendents, usually on Friday. Each report will provide a summary of major activities in the House and Senate that week, plus brief synopses of bills that have implications for schools, districts, boards and education in general.
“This report is designed with our busy local leaders in mind. A lot of bills that are important to school leaders never make the mainstream news media coverage. Each week, we’ll look not just back at what was acted upon, but also ahead to what’s on the agenda for the coming week,” said Shannon Pratt Stiglitz, KSBA’s director of governmental relations.
“Whenever possible, we’ll link to the online bill language so our members can see exactly what’s being proposed. Of course, bills frequently are amended in one way or another, so it’s important to check back from time to time on a bill of particular interest to see if its status and/or specifics have changed,” Stiglitz said.
A popular service added in 2011 returns to keep local education policy makers as up-to-date as possible.
The KSBA legislative team of Stiglitz and Associate Executive Director David Baird staff dozens of House and Senate committee meetings, as well as some of the full chamber afternoon sessions. When a committee or a chamber acts on an education bill of interest, they get the information to KSBA’s Member Support Service staff, who will post updates on the association’s Facebook and Twitter pages.
“This could be a solid supplement to the mainstream media coverage on legislative issues that we provide daily through the eNews subscription service,” said Brad Hughes, KSBA’s member support services director.
“We make our Facebook and Twitter pages available for reading by anyone online, and they are both linked from the KSBA website home page,” Hughes said. “We’re hoping that these updates can keep board members and superintendents as up-to-date on legislative action as anyone outside the Capitol itself could possibly be.”
KSBA’s Facebook page may be accessed here https://www.facebook.com/pages/KSBA/131497443560944?ref=search.
KSBA’s Twitter page may be accessed here https://twitter.com/#!/ksbanews.
There also are links to both on the KSBA website home page.