Visalia Unified School District Board honored with Golden Gavel Award
Awarded for Governance Team of the Year by the California School Board Association
VISALIA, Calif. (KFSN) -- The Visalia Unified School District Board recently gained special recognition.
The board was named Governance Team Of The Year by the California School Board Association.
The seven members were honored in San Francisco at the Annual Education Conference.
"I am proud to stand with this Visalia Unified Governance Team," Board President Walta Gamoian said while accepting the award.
The full board stood on stage as Gamoian accepted the award.
Gamoian says the board wasn't always unified.
"Every member of our board is very passionate about student learning and about our kids being successful, but what we really disagreed on is how we're going to achieve that," Gamoian said.
She says gathering together as a board and developing core beliefs made the difference.
As a district, they believe all students can learn at very high levels, parents and the community are instrumental in student learning and learning environments should be safe, supportive and innovative.
They came up with a vision and mission statement that they turn to when making decisions.
"We're not making decisions on our personal agendas. We're making decisions on the things we've agreed about -- we've come to an agreement," Gamoian said.
For Superintendent Kirk Shrum, he says the change the board has allowed him to be an effective leader across the district.
In turn, teachers, parents and students also benefit.
"Our community, our parents, our students, they don't have to wonder what we believe in and what we're committed to doing because we spell it out in our foundational policies, and that's what makes that so powerful," Shrum said.
The board had to submit an application for the award.
It included their policies, examples of work, and clips from board meetings.
But judges also attended and watched board meetings to see if the board lived up to what they said on their application, and they did.
Superintendent Shrum says the unification is allowing VUSD families to have faith in the board.
The board says they're moving forward by working on a long-range facility plan.
They have also started creating and rolling out a strategic plan, all to benefit students.
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