Greetings from the School Reform Initiative,
We hope this message finds you deeply involved in your work with students and teachers as we move into the heart of the school year. This message contains important information concerning our upcoming election.
Board Member Election Update
Nominations for our Board of Directors elections are coming, and we need your participation! When SRI formed in 2009, our intent was to create an organization that was fiercely committed to equity and excellence. As part of this mission, we knew it was important to have a board that was elected by members of our community. We are committed to maintaining a board representative of our communities and reflective of the diversity of the children and adults we serve. Our goal is to cultivate an organization that represents the diverse aspects of our communities including our different ethnicities, genders, roles in education, and areas of the country.
Where We’ve Been
In order to create a diverse and representative board we sought candidates through the use of filters for our first two elections. Specifically, we invited people of color in our first election, and men during our second, hoping to create a board comprised of people who would guide our work and provide multiple perspectives as we developed our organization. Last year, our third election, we did not apply a filter and had a slate of 10 highly qualified candidates from around the country from which three candidates were elected. We are conscious of the need to continue to be a diverse group, and we are looking to you, educators and friends in the field, to be partners in this commitment. All of our board members of color are ending their terms at the same time because of the filter on our first election. For this fourth board election, confident in our collective readiness to nominate a panel of candidates representing the rich diversity of the SRI membership, we have chosen not to have a filter.
Call to Action
We are calling on you, our affiliates and partners, to support the mission and work of SRI by helping us to identify and put forward candidates who will maintain our goal for a diverse board. This is our invitation to you to help us grow an organization that advocates for educators and students. We call upon you to nominate candidates you believe will help us live out our fierce commitment to educational excellence and equity. Maybe you yourself are that candidate and you have been waiting for an opportunity to serve. In the coming year, SRI’s board will be taking up important work, including:
- developing the services offered by SRI
- expanding systems for continuous growth of practitioners of our work
- supporting and developing regional capacity for our work
- ensuring SRI’s financial sustainability
If this work sounds interesting to you, or you have particular experiences or talents that can help move the work of the board forward, we urge you to contact us. And, if you know someone who you think “fits the bill”, we urge you to put his or her name forward by sending nominations to Ileana Liberatore at iliberatore@schoolreforminitiative.org.
Nominations will close Monday November 4, 2013.
Outgoing Tributes
Thank you for your service and contributions to the work of advancing the School Reform Initiative to the next level:
❖ Frances Hensley, Georgia, Past President
❖ Debbi Laidley, California
❖ Ileana Rivera Liberatore, Texas
❖ Gillian Smith, New York
Ongoing Board Members
New electees will get to work closely with the following board members to further our mission:
❖ Tarrence Banks, Indiana
❖ Kevin Fahey, Massachusetts
❖ Beth Graham, Massachusetts
❖ Mark Otto, New York
❖ Heather Palin, California
❖ Teri Schrader, New York, Past President
❖ Gene Thompson-Grove, Massachusetts
❖ Thomas Van Soelen, Georgia
Thank you,
SRI Board Election Nominating Committee
Ileana Liberatore
Jean-Jacques Credi
Susan Adams
Wendy Brannen
P. Tim Martindell
