Holland honored with school board award
Longtime Warren County School Board member Mike Holland has been inducted into the Tennessee School Board Association Scholar’s Circle after attaining 900 plus boardsmanship points in the TSBA Boardsmanship Award Program, which recognizes individual achievements of school board members.
TSBA president Dawn Robinson presented Holland with the award at TSBA’s annual convention Nov. 12 at Gaylord Resort & Convention Center in Nashville.
Holland, who has been on the Warren County School Board for over 13 years, said he was gratified to receive the recognition.
‘I was surprised,’ Holland said. ‘But I appreciated it very much, and was pleased to be one out of 11 in the state who received the award. I was really honored.’
Holland says he has made a point to attend as many programs and seminars as possible in order to learn as much as he can about his responsibilities as a school board member, and though some of these are required, he has also attended as many others as he could on a voluntary basis.
‘The state requires you to go to at least eight hours of training per year,’ Holland said. ‘They have them broken up in modules and I had met all my required modules, but there are others available and you get points for every module and program you attend, such as the Day on the Hill where we go to lobby with our state officials on certain bills and things of that nature.’
Holland’s efforts to go the extra mile beyond the standard requirements is one of the main reasons he has qualified for the Scholar’s Circle with 900 plus points, but he says he attends these optional programs because he wants to learn as much as he can about the legislation and trends that affect education at the state and federal levels.
‘If you don’t keep up to date you can’t be an effective board member,’ Holland said. ‘You won’t know what’s going on. You’ve got to know what state and federal laws have been changed and what the new guidelines and regulations are. They change so frequently, especially on the educational side of it at the state level where they want to change the curriculum and other items, you have to keep up with it, stay on top of it, or you’ll get behind and not know what’s going on.’
More than 700 board members and other Tennessee school leaders attended the 70th annual TSBA convention, where they set the association’s legislative agenda and heard nationally acclaimed speakers.
The Tennessee School Board Association, a statewide, nonprofit organization, is a federation of the state’s local school boards. TSBA’s mission is to assist its members in effectively governing school districts and to serve as an advocate for the interests of Tennessee’s public school students and school districts.