The New Jersey School Boards Association (NJSBA ) joins a growing list of more than 20 state school board associations and over 2,000 subscribers nationwide that have selected BoardDocs for their e-governance provider. BoardDocs services are proven to save districts money, while users see a dramatic increase in their board’s effectiveness and in their administrative time-of-staff productivity.
BoardDocs is designed from the ground up for the creation, disclosure, public information, security and limited collaboration needs of public governing bodies. With BoardDocs, all information is in one centralized location and is easily shared with different stakeholders, whether public, staff or board. BoardDocs also comes with in-district training, and a “24/7” U.S.-based support line which is there for all stakeholders, no matter what time of the day or night. For more information on BoardDocs support and security, please review the Frequently Asked Questions sheet.
Some of the features of BoardDocs include:
- Allows staff to submit agenda items and supporting documents;
- Allows agenda items to be routed electronically for approval, showing each step of the approval process;
- Click, drag and drop to reorder agenda items with automatic renumbering and all supporting documents following the item;
- Changes/additions to the agenda are automatically available for all stakeholders without having to update multiple versions of meeting documents;
- Automatic generation of minutes;
- Integration of meeting videos;
- Publication of multiple manuals such as policy and student handbooks;
- MetaSearch which allows staff and board to search publically-shared agendas, policies and other documents of all public governing bodies using BoardDocs services nationwide.
How does BoardDocs compare to other vendors and services?
There are free services that allow boards to host their agenda and/or other publications. Please use caution when using these types of services since they do not provide the security protections needed for meeting documents, ease of agenda preparation, agenda review, or ease of effective searching of board-related materials. They can allow board members to collaborate and share ideas and information in documents and notes. This can lead to a violation of the Open Public Meetings Act and the modification to your agenda without approval.
Other vendors make e-governance, board management platforms as a “sideline” business. They are not committed 100 percent as BoardDocs is; do not offer 24/7 live phone support; cannot support video integration and have limited staff. While BoardDocs comes with Agenda – Policy – Library – Search tabs, some vendors sell each module as stand-alones which could prove costly.
As an example of how BoardDocs compares to both a free service and another vendor, please view the side-by-side comparison with Google Drive and Schoolboardnet.
Through BoardDocs, NJSBA offers two cost-effective, powerful, easy-to-use solutions that will allow districts to significantly improve the way they create and manage board packets, access information and conduct meetings: BoardDocs Pro and BoardDocs LT. Both products are fully supported on mobile devices and tablets.
To learn more, contact Lou Schimenti, NJSBA Products and Services Specialist via email or by telephone at (609) 278-5271.