When I was first elected to serve on my local school board, I understood governance as stewardship, adopting responsible budgets, setting strategic direction, and hiring and evaluating a superintendent. Over time, I came to understand something even more consequential: governance does not end when the gavel falls. Many of the decisions that shape our schools are made beyond our boardrooms. If we are not present in those conversations, our students are not fully represented in them.

That realization reshaped my understanding of advocacy.

Advocacy is not separate from governance; it is one of its highest expressions. School board members are among the few elected officials whose sole focus is children. We know our students. We attend their performances and athletic events. We celebrate their milestones and share the weight of their challenges. That closeness gives us something invaluable in policy conversations, credibility grounded in lived experience. We are translating classroom reality into public understanding.

California’s public education system reflects the extraordinary diversity and complexity of our state. In classrooms across California, students arrive with immense promise and varying needs. Some are learning English while mastering grade level content. Some are navigating housing or food insecurity. Others are preparing for careers in industries that did not exist a generation ago. Equity requires more than good intentions; it requires that decision-makers understand these realities before policies are crafted and resources are allocated.

Advocacy often begins quietly through conversations with legislators, participation in forums, testimony at hearings or meetings with community partners. It is sustained through trust and consistency. When board members speak about what implementation truly looks like in their districts, policymakers gain insight that cannot be captured in data alone. They begin to see the practical implications of their decisions on real students in real classrooms.

Many of the most important advocacy efforts are not dramatic or highly visible. They occur when a board member brings practical insight to a policy discussion — explaining how a requirement will be implemented in a small district with limited staff, for example, or describing what flexibility means for multilingual learners striving to succeed, or outlining the fiscal realities behind a new mandate. These contributions ground policymaking in operational truth. They help decision-makers understand not only what a proposal intends to accomplish, but what it will actually require in classrooms and communities.

Advocacy is an act of leadership. It ensures that those entrusted with implementing policy are meaningfully engaged in shaping it. It reflects governance at its fullest — not simply carrying out directives, but helping design systems that are effective, equitable and sustainable. When board members engage in this way, policy becomes stronger because it is informed by experience.

This responsibility also reaches beyond state borders. Federal policy influences critical areas of education, from support for students with disabilities to programs that provide meals and academic assistance. Decisions made by our federal representatives affect classrooms in every community. When school board members engage at the federal level, they ensure that national decisions reflect the scale, diversity and realities of California schools.

At its core, advocacy is about representation. It is about ensuring that rural, suburban and urban communities alike are heard. It is about lifting the voices of students whose experiences must inform the systems designed to serve them. It is about making certain that equity is not simply declared but deliberately pursued.

Advocacy also reflects the trust placed in us by our communities. Voters elect school board members to safeguard educational opportunity. When we step into broader policy conversations, we honor that trust. We affirm that those closest to students must help shape the conditions under which students learn.

Public education remains one of our state’s most powerful commitments to equity, opportunity and democratic participation. Yet commitments do not sustain themselves. They require engagement. They require presence. They require leaders willing to speak with clarity and conviction on behalf of those they serve.

And when every school board member embraces that responsibility — not as an added task, but as an integral part of governance — we ensure that every student, in every community, is seen, heard and represented wherever decisions about their education are made.

CSBA works to make collective advocacy easier on all of us. From annual events like Legislative Action Week, where trustees meet virtually with their state representatives, and the Coast2Coast Federal Advocacy Trip (taking place this year from April 13-15), where board members and superintendents bend the ear of our federal representatives, to Action Alert emails that respond to urgent legislative concerns, CSBA aims to direct member advocacy where it will make the most difference.

Public education is a promise. Advocacy is how we protect it.