50 Years and Counting: Policy Service Dedicated to its Members

Amanda Bigbee, division director of TASB Policy Service, understands the challenges public school leaders and educators face each day. For starters, Bigbee attended little Sundown ISD in West Texas, where her father was the district’s principal and chief financial officer. Her graduating class had 31 people. Before joining TASB in November 2023, she served more than 15 years as general counsel at Keller ISD, a suburban district of about 34,000 students in North Texas.

As TASB Policy Service honors its 50th anniversary this year, Bigbee is proud that the division continues to provide economical and quality services for districts of all sizes and needs. The skilled Policy Service team has decades of school experience. “I am incredibly proud of how effectively the Policy Service team works to lessen the burden of government on school districts,” Bigbee said.

Texas Lone Star talked to Bigbee about the TASB Policy Service’s history as well as the experienced team’s many efforts to serve member districts.

Q: Happy 50th anniversary! Policy Service has a long legacy of providing support to member school boards. Tell us how Policy Service’s efforts have evolved since 1975.

As far as we know, the first written policy-type documents for a Texas school district were Galveston ISD’s Rules and Regulations document, which was published in 1937. I think the history of school policy in this state starts there. Increasingly detailed state and federal requirements imposed on school districts during the late 1960s and early 1970s pushed Texas school districts to get serious about defining the parameters of local governance through the adoption of local policies. Early efforts by others to do this work failed in large part because of the pace of change, the cost of the work, the expertise required, and confusion over the function of local policies.

In 1970, then TASB Executive Director Cecil Rusk proposed to the TASB Board that the Association take a big step into this world by establishing a policy clearinghouse. The adopted proposal provided that “the staff would utilize the policy file, state and federal statutes, court decisions, attorney general opinions, and Texas Education Agency regulations and guidelines to develop and maintain a set of model policies. ... A distinguished board of review could be established for the purpose of ensuring a high-quality model that could meet the test of legality. ... The model policies set would be made available at a cost.”

The proposal also contemplated an updating schedule to alert districts to information needed to keep policies current. It also projected establishing what they called “field services” to help districts adapt models and to assist districts during the process of policy revisions. It’s exciting to me that the idea of dedicated consultants and local control of policy language is the foundation of the work we do now, and that was at the very center of the origin of Policy Service back in 1970.

TASB pushed through funding and staffing issues to bring the model policies project to life in 1973. But the giant evolutionary step came in 1975, when the Association hired a corps of writers to develop a Policy Reference Manual that would address the need of districts for authoritative information and model policies to support local policy decisions. At this time, membership in TASB was growing, which allowed it to take on the costly development of the service.

Throughout the winter of 1975 and the spring of 1976, work proceeded on the draft of the manual using TASB’s proprietary “alpha” coding system that is still used today. All of the initial drafters were attorneys other than the individual who wrote the E section (instruction), who held a doctorate in education. After the drafts were written and edited, a weekend retreat was held with board members, superintendents, and business managers to allow for a committee review of the work. That input allowed the group to reconstruct and refine the policy language. The result of this work was the launching of the first Policy Reference Manual in 1976. Workshops were held throughout the state to train and explain the tool and how it could help school districts across the state.

In the fall of 1976, Policy Service already had 152 districts subscribe to the policy service, and then Association President Ross Borrett called the response statewide “exhilarating.”

The initial Policy Reference Manual was a combination of legally referenced and local materials. This format proved difficult because districts had difficulty determining where law stopped and local policy began, and updating was difficult because each staff member had to parse out which components were locally developed. These issues led to the manual being reconfigured into the format we use now — separate legally referenced materials and local policy statements.

Policy Reference Manual Transformation

Q: How did this format evolution ultimately impact the way school boards handle policy?

All of this increased knowledge and transparency led to school boards better understanding their responsibilities and executing them with more ease. One of the first attorneys to do this work recounted that “the manuals greatly enhanced the strength and quality of the local governance while concurrently guaranteeing the rights of those who deal with boards. Today, it is hard to imagine running schools without this wonderful tool.”

In 1977, Update 4 was released to the then approximately 300 district members. It was the first time the manual included an updated localized policy manual. All of that work was done on IBM Correcting Selectric typewriters. By 1980, the Association set up an in-house print shop to handle printing and duplicating needs, and by 1981, the department had its first word processor — a Lexitron VT 1303.

In 1981, Policy Service stepped into its computerization era when it hired a group to begin software development in advance of the 1982 purchase of a TI DS990 minicomputer. All of this took place just in time for the flood of policy changes required in school reform legislation [House Bill 72] passed in 1984.

After 1984, TASB Policy Service grew quickly, and by 1988, 1,062 school districts were members of Policy Service and 878 districts had completed localization of their manuals. TASB Policy Service now serves 1,015 school district members, which is 99.7% of the districts in the state!

Our services have evolved and become more sophisticated as the needs of school districts changed. The regulatory environment schools work within is complex and rapidly changing. Policy Service is committed to its founding principles and still aims to ease the burden of government by doing the hard work needed to create legal framework and model local policies that school districts need to function at their best. We are proud to support school board members as they localize their manuals and ensure that the policies adopted meet the needs of their communities.

Policy Service Mission

Q: TASB Policy Service’s stated mission is to assist members with timely, expert, and economical development of board policy and administration resources. What types of specific services does the team provide to its members?

We offer a range of services and materials to our member districts, including:

• Consulting: Each member school district is assigned a policy consultant who can help draft language to meet your local needs, answer questions about policies, and help audit your entire policy manual through a Policy Review Session. Districts know they have a person they can call for help, and our consultants love getting to know their districts and the staff in them. That personal attention is part of what sets TASB Policy Service apart.
• Legal Framework: In coordination with Legal Services, TASB Policy Service organizes and hosts legal policies that provide context and serve as legal framework for our member districts.
• Local Policy Recommendations: TASB Policy Service provides recommended local policy language to member districts roughly twice a year through numbered updates and upon request from a district. The recommended policy language has been vetted through TASB Legal Services. School boards have complete control over their local policies, and there is no obligation for districts to adopt these policy recommendations. Policy Service will publish adopted local policies to the district’s policy manual after adoption.
• Model Student Handbook and Student Code of Conduct: Every year, TASB Policy Service provides member districts with a model student handbook that complies with the law and best practices and can be updated to meet each district’s unique needs. A model student code of conduct is typically released during the summer every other year after legislative sessions.
• Policy Alerts: Occasionally, there are policy-related matters that require the attention of member district administrators. Policy Alerts may be issued when new laws or rules require attention or when action is needed promptly. Member districts are provided email communication when Policy Alerts are issued.
• Policy Online®: TASB Policy Service offers an online platform for member district policy manuals and other regulatory documents. Legal and local policies are organized by a proprietary coding system. Policy Online also houses the Regulations Resource Manual and tools to assist districts in preparing handbooks and resolutions.
• Regulations Resource Manual: The documents found in the Regulations Resource Manual are designed to provide administrators with a reference library of sample administrative procedures and forms by which the requirements of law and local policy are reliably met. They are designed to be a springboard to the development of local procedures and forms as needed.

Challenges and Highlights

Q: What have been some of the biggest challenges for Policy Service over the last 50 years? What are some of the team’s highlights in serving members?

I would say one of the biggest challenges was moving a completely paper process into the modern era and transitioning to providing policy documents on the internet. That’s a lot of growing and evolving processes while maintaining momentum for member school districts. All of the effort that went into digitizing the processes paid off exponentially when COVID-19 forced a change in the way work was completed. All of that growth has given member districts a more efficient service and access to policies through an online platform. We are excited to continue exploring how evolving technologies can help us provide a better service to school districts across the state.

This Year and Beyond

Q: What are you most proud of in your role as division director of TASB Policy Service?

I grew up in a small town in West Texas and graduated with 31 people. My father has worked in school districts of all sizes. I grew up understanding how much is piled on the plates of a small-town superintendent and the school board members. Education is hard for everyone, but it’s a special kind of hard for rural districts. I say that for context for this answer: I am most proud that Policy Service provides an economical and quality option for governance documents for schools of all sizes with a wide array of needs. We provide that service through an exceptionally skilled team with decades of school experience. I am so proud of the quality of work this team does. We truly aim to lessen the burden of government, and I am incredibly proud of how effectively the Policy Service team does that.

Q: Does the team have any specific plans to honor this 50th anniversary?

I’ll never pass on an opportunity to have a party! There may be some surprises up our sleeves. We are excited to celebrate five decades of support of public schools and honoring all of the work that led us to 2025. Going back through the historical documents and photos has been such a treat. It’s an honor to carry on such a longstanding tradition of service to public school boards across the state.

Q: Looking forward to the rest of 2025 and following years, what are some specific goals for TASB Policy Service?

We always have customer service as a top priority. We want to make sure we are providing the best possible service to districts in the most economical and time-efficient way possible. We know school administrators and board members do not have the time to read hundreds of pages of legal codes to make decisions as fast as they have to be made. We are always endeavoring to find ways to make policy work more approachable and easier to manage. That may look like improvements to Policy Online, enhancements to the policies themselves, or even training to make sure policy contacts in districts know all of the resources at their fingertips.

Policy Service is also committed to harnessing technology in a safe way to be more efficient and make the work of policy easier for school districts. The human contact our consultants have with school staff and trustees cannot and will never be replaced, but saving time and money for school districts is a priority for us, and we’re always looking for ways to provide a better product in an economical way.