Wow—these past few years have been tough on school boards, haven’t they? As you work to do your best for the kids, everyone with a variety of different opinions has awakened and has started showing up. Meetings have become understandably more emotional, and many attendees are experiencing formal meeting settings for the first time.

A full, vigorous conversation about the way forward for your school community, where everyone is heard is important—but chaos is not the answer.

We’re here to help.

Robert’s Rules of Order was written way back in 1876 to help bring order to chaos—so the environment found in many of today’s school board meetings is nothing new. In fact, it was so bad back in the 1800s that our friend, US Army officer Henry Martyn Robert came up with best practices to bring order to meetings so that stuff could actually get done.

But his book is hefty reference material—and pretty dry and boring. So here at Jurassic Parliament we have made it our mission to bring these important materials to life in a fun, interactive way.

Whether you’re new to serving on a school board or you have a long history of service, our materials on getting the most out of Robert’s Rules of Order will help you understand best practices such as:

• How to manage public comments in a dignified, ordered way so that everyone is heard
• Why the order of each meeting is important—and how to make sure everyone has the same understanding of meeting procedure
• How to respectfully interrupt, and more

After you have understood and put Robert’s Rules into practice at your school board meetings, you will find that your meetings—while they still may be heated—will accomplish more and be more inclusive than they may have been in the past—and the work for the community will move forward.