Q&A with Kimberly Small, IASB’s New Executive Director
By Theresa Kelly Gegen
In March 2023, Kimberly Small, J.D., was named by the Board of Directors as the next Executive Director of the Illinois Association of School Boards, and she assumed this role on July 1, 2023.
As Executive Director, Small is responsible for Association operations and will represent its positions in state and national public school policy management on behalf of 849 member districts and nearly 6,000 elected Illinois school board members. Small began her employment at IASB in 2005. During her tenure with the Association, she has been a Policy Consultant, Assistant General Counsel, General Counsel, and Associate Executive Director for Policy Services.
Small replaces Thomas E. Bertrand, Ph.D., who announced his departure from IASB last fall and is now the Executive Director of the Consortium of State School Boards Associations (COSSBA).
Small is the eighth full-time Executive Director, and the first woman in the role, in the Association’s 110-year history. Here is the Journal’s Q&A with IASB’s new Executive Director.
You have been with IASB for several years. How has the Association changed since you arrived?
The Association’s staff has been the biggest change since I arrived in 2005, especially over the past 5-7 years, which of course the pandemic accelerated. During my first years in the Association, I was just 30 years old, was “the new employee,” and was the youngest employee in the Lombard office by about 15-20 years for several years! I’m going to be honest, there were many days that I was lonely for a peer who was my age, having come from a job where most people were closer to my age, but the staff at the Association then was — and now is — so supportive of where colleagues are walking in their lives that I found peers despite the age differences. Employee tenure was much longer in those days of the Association’s history. Now, the Association is moving through a transition with many of its employees preparing for retirement or retired, and other employees, as with everywhere in America right now, moving forward to other experiences that they want to have in their careers. For a long time, the Association had very little staff turnover, and now the Association is onboarding a lot of new staff members. Right now, the leadership team has five people who are either new to the Association or in new roles.
I enjoy music and played the piano for over 17 years along with the flute through middle and high school. I often come back to the thought of this time of transition for the Association in terms of music, where you hear the dissonance of a song and your ears want it to resolve — and when it does resolve and move forward, it’s beautiful! Right now, the Association’s staff is experiencing that transition, and the changes are bringing in new perspectives to serve IASB members and help position the IASB for the future. I consider it a great privilege to walk together with staff and the members during this time of the Association’s history. We’ll move together and grow by supporting staff to find member-centered solutions that evolve for the Association members’ needs to govern effectively and provide a quality, public education to the almost two million students that they educate.
How will your experiences inform your leadership? What perspective does your role as an attorney bring to your leadership at IASB?
My upbringing and life experiences have instilled in me a strong sense of faith, resilience, and persistence, and that makes me a leader who reflects the values of integrity, compassion, and results.
My experiences at the Association will also inform my leadership because I’ve been asked to do many jobs that exist at the Association, so those experiences will inform my leadership in understanding the skills for the work that Association leadership asks its staff to perform for IASB members. I have shared with the Board of Directors and staff who I am and what I value, which will inform my leadership.
My role as an attorney brings a different leadership perspective to leading IASB. During law school and early in my career, I always thought that I’d someday want to be a judge. While I chose a different path at IASB, the role of executive director certainly requires a lot of decision-making. Having the background as an attorney will certainly help me maintain objectivity and look at all sides of a situation when making decisions. My experiences as IASB’s General Counsel help me understand every department’s work in serving the membership, and that gives me a head start as the next executive director in understanding what IASB departments do for the members, where their risks are, and how I can be of support to the leadership team at IASB. But it’s important to remember that I will not be practicing law anymore for IASB — that’s for the new General Counsel to do! While I fully understand the legal risks facing the organization, the legislative process, and how new laws impact IASB’s members, the state and federal regulatory scene for IASB members and the Association, it’s important to remember that while those legal skills are transferable to the role of executive director, there are many other leadership lenses required to lead an organization. This is why I sought out an Executive Scholar Certificate in Nonprofit Management from Northwestern Kellogg School of Management. While I also have a dual undergraduate degree in Secondary Education and English, IASB is at its core a 501c3 not-for-profit corporation, not a school district, and I’m excited to take my education and experience into this new role to help support staff in serving IASB’s members.
Before the coronavirus pandemic, the focus was on the then-recently adopted Evidence-Based Funding Formula. What is your opinion of how that is playing out?
IASB said when Evidence-Based Funding (EBF) was passed and implemented in Illinois that the formula will work when it’s fully funded. The results of EBF have improved Tier 1 districts’ adequacy by about 2.4% per year since the law was implemented in FY18. Yet, IASB members need the General Assembly to continually and fully fund the formula for the students in Illinois, which requires attention to inflation and other rising costs for IASB members. Also important to remember is that when IASB members are required to implement unfunded mandates, their Evidence-Based Funding is diminished by the costs of these unfunded mandates.
What will be the overreaching issues in Illinois public education that you anticipate over the next few years? How would you describe the challenges these issues present to boards of education? And how do you anticipate IASB will assist its members?
One thing that is constant is change and another constant is that we just cannot predict the future. When I think about Dr. Bertrand’s tenure, we knew a pandemic could happen someday, but we could have never predicted how the pandemic was layered with the Summer of 2020’s racial reckoning, causing American school boards to reflect on their systems of education and the impact of them upon their students in the context of diversity, equity, and inclusion. So it’s difficult to predict what the challenges might be over the next few years. To remain as prepared as possible, we can set expectations for staff related to how we serve IASB members. What I can predict is that our staff will be ready to serve IASB members to meet whatever challenges lie ahead.
Right now, those challenges include, but are not limited to learning loss from the pandemic; unfunded mandate costs; full Evidence-Based Funding; equity, diversity, and inclusion; and conflict management. Conflict is a challenge in all areas and will not be going away. It’s important to remember that conflict can be healthy when we have the tools to understand it and listen to each other. Providing our members with tools to understand why it happens and how to diffuse it and move out of it will be important. Advocating for adequate and full funding in education will also be a constant for IASB.
How do you envision the Association moving forward, as you take over the Executive Director role?
There are a lot of things that we are unable to control in the education space and the world in general, so to the extent that I can provide staff and members consistency, I will do that when it serves IASB’s vision and mission for its members. We want high levels of satisfaction with our mission’s programs and services. It’s important to remember that:
IASB exists to serve members. The focus this year will be on staff showing gratitude toward members for the unpaid service they provide in their communities.
Member satisfaction and engagement with IASB are vital to the financial health of the organization. Staff are working on a robust internal member engagement metric to help IASB evolve its programs and services and empower members and support them with their local needs.
Excellence in programs, services, and resources to membership ensures return on investment to districts.
Moving forward, the Association will continue its evolution to empower its members to advocate for public education in their communities. With member satisfaction and excellence, IASB will continue to work toward aligning department goals to its future strategic plans, re-invest in tech and infrastructure, and maintain the financial stability of the Association.
This fiscal year, 2023-2024, the Association will fulfill its 6E Strategic Plan and move forward with developing its next strategic plan for FY24-25. To do that, staff needs to continue to focus on IASB’s newly developed and implemented Core Values: To do our best our staff members must feel respected for their expertise and included in all spaces where they are needed to serve members. So, IASB’s diversity, equity, and inclusion work internally and externally must deepen at the Association. It will provide updated experiences for its board presidents and other targeted learning opportunities. Members will see an enhanced Annual Conference this year with some new options for learning, and let’s not forget the refreshed IASB logo!
What insight or advice do you have to offer school board members?
You are taking unpaid time away from your paid work and precious time away from your families and friends to serve your local communities. The fact that you are a volunteer is often unknown or misunderstood, and IASB is here to support your work and show its gratitude to you for what you do in your communities for the students that your boards educate.
First, it’s important for newly elected school board members to finish their mandatory school board member training to be familiar with all of the areas that you are required to know as a board member. The best piece of advice I can give is to absorb the extraordinary amount of information that you’re expected to know as you take your seat on the school board. Always lean back on the Oath of Office when you face challenging situations.
From finishing mandated training, use IASB to build upon your knowledge. To do that, IASB can serve you with a vast number of professional development offerings for you as an individual board member seeking growth. Did you know that our Association has a library where you can check out books to help you understand your role as a board member and the K-12 education space? Have you checked out IASB’s Online Learning Center courses?
Use the Joint Annual Conference to network with fellow board members across the state and interact with the lawyers who represent school boards in Illinois. They’re present at the Conference to support your work and help you be the best board member that you can be for the students that you serve. No one knows what it’s like to serve, except your fellow school board members. It’s important to know that many school boards — even ones that are geographically diverse from each other — face the same challenges. Networking at this event helps provide boards with new perspectives to solve challenges.
My next piece of advice is to know that your board’s statutory duty in the School Code is to direct the superintendent through policy, so it’s vitally important for you to know and understand your school board’s policy manual. IASB Policy Directors can help you with that and make knowing your policies less daunting.
Next, it’s important to know the staff in IASB’s Field and Equity Services department to ensure your needs in the field are being met.
Once you know and understand your local school district’s needs and how your local policies are impacted by legislation, IASB can help empower you and your fellow board members to advocate for public education by speaking with the legislators that your community has elected to serve you.
Bottom line, IASB has vast resources and supports for you and your fellow board members that can help you make an impact in local school board governance for the students in which you serve.