Leander ISD trustees spent a daylong workshop with a Texas Association of School Boards (TASB) consultant to deepen the board’s role in driving districtwide learning and alignment.

TASB senior board development consultant Oren Moore opened the session by asking trustees why they ran for the board and by presenting research linking collaborative learning behaviors to high-performing teams. Moore emphasized that effective governance aligns closely with duties set out in the education code and urged trustees to ground any board learning effort in measurable goals and the system’s needs. "If you want to truly understand effective governance, go back to the education code," Moore said during the presentation (Oren Moore). The workshop included a board self-assessment that placed the trustees in the “performing” stage of team development, which Moore described as a strong foundation to build on.

Trustees then moved into practical planning. They collectively drafted a preliminary "learning journey," listing topics they want the board to prioritize over the next one to two years. Items raised repeatedly included (1) how the district should respond to new Texas Education Freedom Account programs (vouchers) and other alternate learning environments; (2) stronger, repeatable family and community engagement practices; (3) clearer, goal‑linked data packages trustees can use for oversight; and (4) attention to staff workload and district culture to sustain teacher retention.

Throughout the session trustees and administrators discussed expectations for the acting superintendent and central office. Trustees asked for clear short‑ and long‑term priorities, timelines for when specific data would be available, plain and consistent public communication, and more visible campus engagement by district leaders. A member of the administration asked trustees to route constituent concerns through established channels first so staff could address issues before they were elevated to public board conversations.

The afternoon focused on adapting the district’s PLC implementation guide to a board-specific "team of eight" implementation guide. Facilitators presented four organizing categories—PLC foundation, collaborative culture, a research/data culture, and resource allocation—and asked trustees to mark proposed key actions as "adopt, adjust or abandon" and to specify what evidence of success would look like for the board. Trustees worked in small groups to refine those board actions and practiced short public messages explaining PLC efforts to the community.

Before adjourning trustees briefly reviewed committee rosters and volunteered for committee membership; those selections were recorded informally in the meeting but no formal vote appears in the transcript. The board adjourned after confirming next steps for drafting a board implementation guide and for administration to return prioritized "big rocks" the superintendent recommends the board focus on moving forward.

The workshop produced two immediate outputs the transcript records: (1) a prioritized list of candidate learning topics for the board to refine into an annual learning plan; and (2) the start of a board implementation guide (key actions and evidence) that the PLC guiding coalition will refine and return to the trustees for adoption. The facilitator and trustees agreed that the work is iterative and will continue across the year.