Speak at a School Board Meeting
Speaking out at community, town or school board meetings is as American as apple pie. Local boards provide a glimpse of Democracy at its most basic level. Speaking in public however is for most people a most frightful and difficult thing to do. Here is some help to get you ready specifically for speaking at school board meetings.
Contents
Steps
- Decide what your goal is. Are you interested in one particular issue, or are you planning to go on to become active in the community and are using the meeting as a stepping off point for a career in politics or civic participation?
- Think about going to a number of meetings before you ever speak, if you intend to become active in civics.
- Decide on a topic or area that interests you, and watch what is happening in the school board meeting. Follow the bi-play on the topic and ascertain who on the board shares your views, who is against your position and who can be persuaded.
- If you are only interested in one topic, and you need to make an impact, you must know the topic as well as you can. One of the best ways to overcome fear is to be completely prepared.
- Determine if you will be just making a speech or if you will have to answer questions from the board.
- If you are making a speech, and you are new at it, write it down, then practice it until you have every breath of it memorized.
- Get in front of a mirror and practice, then after that get a friend or two to listen to the speech.
- Have a copy of the speech with you at the meeting, but try not to refer to it. You will want to make eye contact with your audience and reading a speech from a prepared script is not the way to accomplish this. If you absolutely have to read the speech, build in stop points where you can lift your head to make eye contact and then go back to reading.
- Use inflection, breathing, and volume to make what you have to say sound as important to others as it is to you. Speak slowly, and with enough volume to know that the audience can hear you. vary tone and timing so as to keep yourself from speaking in a monotone and monotonous voice.
- Keep it short. No one wants to hear a long speech. Most boards limit the time for public comment, finish within your time and if you have more to say, tell the committee you will send the rest of your comments to them in the mail.
- Give just enough background so that your listeners understand why you are there and what you are talking about. Do not give a minute by minute description, it is boring.
- Make sure any exhibits you plan to use are organized and big enough for your audience to see.
- Be sure your topic is appropriate to the board you are speaking before. Do not ask the city council to fix something the school board should be on and do not ask the school board to debate a war resolution.
- Be polite, do not be sarcastic, do not use a joke unless it is really hysterical. Even then, leave it out and you will have a far easier time of it.
- Ask if there are any questions after you've finished your remarks; answer them if you can. If you cannot answer a question, tell the questioner you will submit an answer in writing after checking out the issue. Do not make up answers on the fly. Get back to the board with the answer as soon as possible.
- Thank the board for their time when questions have been addressed, and return to your seat. Do not leave until there is a break or the meeting ends unless you have a very good reason, you will want to hear follow up and you may be called on again if a question on the issue you presented comes up.
Tips
- Do not worry if someone on the board who disagrees with you treats you with derision. If you do not rise to the bait, he or she will look small, as if picking on an innocent member of the community for speaking up. You should not try to debate until you know how and are comfortable with the give and take of the genre.
- Your word is your bond, you can easily lose your reputation by misspeaking at a meeting. If you do not know an answer, offer to research it and get back to the board with additions to your formal remarks.
Warnings
- Do not pile on. If a subject you are interested has been fully covered and you are not adding anything new to the debate, do no speak.
- Avoid taking it personally. Usually, no one on a board has anything to gain by getting the issue wrong. People who serve on boards want the best for the community the same as you do albeit they may not see it your way. Realize they are working for the same goal.
