Superintendent presents draft governance handbook; board discusses norms, Brown Act and response timelines

Superintendent Dr. De La Torre presented a draft San Marino Unified School District Board of Education governance handbook titled “Board governance handbook, communications, meeting norms, and protocols,” and asked the board for input before returning the document for adoption at a future meeting. The draft includes a statement of unity of purpose, board norms (students first, shared responsibility, respectful discourse), roles and responsibilities for the board and superintendent, and a series of operating agreements covering agenda development, meeting conduct, public comment, and Brown Act compliance. Dr. De La Torre said the draft draws on materials from the California School Boards Association (CSBA) and other districts’ governance handbooks. Board members asked for clearer site‑level escalation language and a framework (teacher → assistant principal → principal) so most issues are resolved at the site level before reaching the board. Dr. De La Torre said she would draft an explicit framework and include it in the revised handbook. The draft also specifies a biweekly superintendent update to the board, timeliness expectations for administrative responses (staff were asked to respond to emails within 24 hours), and a protocol that formal information requests from board members be routed through the superintendent and president so the whole board has equal access to responses. Board members discussed closed‑session confidentiality, record keeping and an attestation page that would have trustees sign to reaffirm the norms. The superintendent agreed to add closed‑session norms and more explicit record‑keeping language to the meeting playbook appendix and to return an edited version for board approval at the next meeting. No formal action was taken; the handbook was presented for feedback and will be returned for adoption after edits.