Mississippi School Boards Association

The Mississippi School Boards Association (MSBA) is a professional, nonprofit organization whose mission is to ensure quality school board performance through Advocacy, Leadership Training, Technical Assistance The Mississippi School Boards Association (MSBA) is a professional, nonprofit organization whose mission is to ensure quality school board performance through Advocacy, Leadership Training, Technical Assistance and Information Dissemination. MSBA represents all public school boards of education in the State of Mississippi.

MSBA is the lobbying wing of Mississippi school boards at the State and federal levels and assists school districts with their grassroots lobbying efforts at the local level. MSBA is also the primary technical resource for school boards and superintendents on school board governance and other related issues. MSBA also serves as a principle resource for statewide educational and parental organizations in helping them understand the governance role of the board and the administrative role of the superintendent.

MSBA is Mississippi's primary leadership training entity for public school boards of education. Legislatively, MSBA is charged with providing all: (1) basic training for new school board members; (2) continuing education for veteran board members; (3) financial training for school boards in districts that are financially distressed; (4) state mandated training for school boards and superintendents with failing schools within their districts.

MSBA writes, publishes and distributes information on all issues associated with school boards and school governance from the role of boards in improving student achievement to how school boards hire an attorney. MSBA also produces two, 3-hour school board training modules each year on subjects ranging from running effective school board meetings to team building.

As a service to its members, MSBA launched a superintendent search service in 2006. MSBA has now become the premiere superintendent search agency in the State of Mississippi. To date, MSBA has performed or is in the process of performing, 34 superintendent searches (MSBA currently has four superintendent searches in progress). Of these 30 completed searches, 24 were successful as measured by the superintendent still being with the district, retired successfully or moved to a larger district after a successful stint at the previous school district —for an 80% success rate.