10 reasons you know you’re a school board secretary
Can we have your attention for a minute? We know — as a school board secretary or clerk, you might not have many minutes to spare. But we wanted to talk to you about the special club of which you’re a member, a club that knows there is no such thing as too much efficiency or attention to detail!
We gathered some ways you (and we) recognize the special qualities of the school board secretary and how the right board management solution (Diligent Community!) can help you do your job even better.
1. You get an A+ in open meetings math.
Open meetings requirements are serious business, and you take them seriously. Depending on your local or state policies, you can immediately count backwards or forwards to know when your meeting agendas and minutes need to be shared with the public.
How Diligent Community helps: It makes these steps easier with one-click publishing, scheduled agenda release and AI-supported minutes generation from your livestreamed meeting transcripts to save time.
2: That 10 p.m. phone call could be your partner, a friend, your kid...but probably your district superintendent.
Let’s face it: If it’s the night before a school board meeting, it’s probably your superintendent asking you to add updated supporting documentation to an agenda item...
How Diligent Community helps: By making revisions and publishing easy. You can create agendas, attach documents, insert items and build and publish packets within a single digital tool.
3. The delete key is worn down on your keyboard. Actually, on every keyboard in the office.
In addition to knowing your keyboard shortcuts, you are a pro at reordering, reinserting, resending... You’ve rejigged agendas, re-rejigged agendas and re-sent re-rejigged agendas more times than you can count.
How Diligent Community helps: There is no “one-and-done” with any board-related document, and even the smallest change can reflow the organization of the board book. Swiftly move agenda items around, upload and reorder documents and more, without having to repaginate manually, while customizable templates simplify formatting decisions.
4. You’ve used your meeting-planning skills for a family wedding, birthday party, bar mitzvah, etc., and your family asked, “How do you do it?”
You learned by doing it on the job — managing RSVPs, estimating time limits, tracking individual preferences, understanding how to keep a group of people moving forward on a complicated project and smoothing over relationships. You could have a side hustle in event planning if you only had the time...
How Diligent Community helps: Make things easier on you and your board with automated workflows that can remind your leadership team, so you don’t have to. Diligent Community also offers digital voting to enhance accountability and ease decision-making.
5. You have a folder in your email labeled simply, “FOIA.”
You open your email and there are 334 public information requests since yesterday. Let’s be honest — when you see “public records request” in the subject line, it’s hard not to feel a mix of dread and the distinct urge to pour another cup of coffee.
How Diligent Community helps: Your district website provided by Diligent Community helps focus on public transparency, providing searchable information on meetings and policies and integrating livestreamed meetings with timestamped agendas and AI-supported minutes that reduce the need for individual requests and saves you time.
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Download the checklist!6. You have strong opinions on spelling, style, size of fonts...
Your ability to spot a stray comma or inconsistent font at 50 paces is nothing short of legendary. It’s a talent that turns chaos into clarity, ensuring the school board’s documents not only inform but impress. Minutiae? Hardly. These systems that make work more efficient and consistent are your old friends. You’ve even had dreams where you’re formatting meeting minutes.
How Diligent Community helps: You can find similar help from built-in document templates that make creating and editing your standard board documents straightforward, clean and consistent. And automated workflows make sure nothing falls through the cracks, boosting accountability across the entire team.
7. You could recite Robert’s Rules of Order in your sleep.
You’re an expert on parliamentary procedure, and Robert’s Rules of Order is your secret weapon for keeping meetings on track, ensuring every voice is heard and transforming chaos into order with the precision of a seasoned pro.
How Diligent Community helps: Streamline agenda and meeting management with a secure, digital process designed to enhance decision-making quality over administrative preparation. Features include automated agenda creation, full-cycle meeting oversight, simplified workflows and one-click publishing of agendas and minutes, leaving you free to focus on keeping the meeting running smoothly.
8. Vacation planning is like advanced-level Tetris with agendas and deadlines.
Like everyone else in education, planning a vacation involves looking at the school calendar, but also budget meetings, transition periods for your board, Executive Cabinet meetings, policy manual update sessions, audit preparation time, state reporting deadlines, administration team meetings... never mind all the seasonal and school events. Balancing your time off requires an uncanny ability to forecast last-minute meeting requests and discussions, ensuring your break is anything but predictable.
9. The leadership team’s birthdays are on your calendar, and you know their spouses’ and kids’ names by heart.
So much of what the clerk or secretary does is relationship-building, and you’ve got that part down. Building rapport with the board isn't just a skill — it's an art. You’re the glue that keeps everyone connected, balancing professionalism with a personal touch that ensures meetings run smoothly and relationships thrive.
How Diligent Community helps: Diligent Community makes the rote parts of your job easier and quicker so you can focus on maintaining successful working relationships with your superintendent, board and fellow administrators.
10. You’ve considered adding “cat herder” to your job title.
Because sometimes that's just what it feels like. What more can we say?
In all seriousness, we’re here to help
Look to Diligent Community to help with all of these areas and more. It is a cloud-based software solution specifically designed for publicly elected boards. And it helps board secretaries and clerks increase their efficiency and effectiveness by providing a centralized platform that enhances administrative processes, streamlines communication and improves overall efficiency.
You are part of a special club, and we at Diligent are proud to work with you. Let’s talk about Diligent Community and how it can support you and your board.
