Citizen oversight of local government is the cornerstone of democracy in the United States. School board members are locally elected public officials entrusted with governing a community’s public schools. The role of the school board is to ensure that school districts are responsive to the values, beliefs and priorities of their communities. Boards fulfill this role by performing five major responsibilities:

• Setting direction
• Establishing an effective and efficient structure
• Providing support
• Ensuring accountability
• Providing community leadership as advocates for children, the school district and public schools

These five responsibilities represent core functions that are so fundamental to a school system’s accountability to the public that they can only be performed by an elected governing body. Authority is granted to the board as a whole, not each member individually. Therefore, board members fulfill these responsibilities by working together as a governance team with the superintendent to make decisions that will best serve all the students in the community.

In California, there are approximately 1,000 school districts and county offices of education that are governed by more than 5,000 school board members. California’s is the largest public school system in the nation, serving more than 6 million students — a collective student body larger than the total population of many other states.