Less admin, more impact: Reducing management load on school boards

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Streamlining administrative tasks isn’t just about efficiency. It can also help improve outcomes for schools and their communities

OnBoard is the board governance platform that empowers leaders to govern confidently from anywhere. Built with powerful AI capabilities, it simplifies board work, surfaces insights and streamlines decision-making. Trusted by thousands of organisations globally − including across Australia and New Zealand − OnBoard helps boards move faster, lead smarter and stay securely connected. OnBoard Board Management Software | Board Portal | Board Intelligence

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“It’s our view that it should take minutes to do minutes. That doesn’t mean it’s become simplified or dumbed down. In fact, it can be the opposite”

Rob Kunzler, OnBoard

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Published 11 Aug 2025

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“The way we think about AI being deployed within a governance platform or board management platform is number one, better meetings; number two, better planning; number three, better governance; and number four, better outcomes”

Rob Kunzler, OnBoard

Giving time back to boards

AS SCHOOL BOARD agendas grow more complex, so does the challenge of managing board operations. At a time of increased expectations from stakeholders, compliance obligations and technological change, boards need to be at the top of their governance game to deliver on their responsibilities. Rob Kunzler, chief marketing officer at OnBoard, a cloud-based board management platform, says boards and educators are facing challenges on myriad fronts and navigating community and social issues that go well beyond traditional strategic policy decisions on teaching, learning and funding. “The ability to govern solidly and thoughtfully in that type of environment is challenging,” Kunzler says. To manage these challenges, boards need more time to focus on strategic conversations and executive decisions, rather than being mired in paperwork and process.

Kunzler says the aim of OnBoard, which is used by more than 100 organisations across Australia and New Zealand, including schools and higher education institutions, is to make board meetings more informed, more effective and less complicated. “Many board members I’ve talked to will often say board meetings are none of those three things,” he says. “They are rarely simple; often the board as a full body, or individual members, seem to be uninformed; and if anything rules the day, it’s complication.”

These complications are likely to be organisational and governance-based rather than focused on actual strategic questions, and it’s here that Kunzler believes AI-enabled platforms can transform the way boards operate. “The way we think about AI being deployed within a governance platform or board management platform is number one, better meetings; number two, better planning; number three, better governance; and number four, better outcomes,” he says. Minutes are a core pillar of best practice for any board meeting, regardless of organisation type, and this function of taking meeting minutes and reporting back to the board can take weeks. “It’s our view that it should take minutes to do minutes,” Kunzler says. “That doesn’t mean it’s become simplified or dumbed down. In fact, it can be the opposite.” Kunzler says using AI to automate processes with careful human oversight can massively reduce the time spent organising, compiling and sharing minutes for comments, feedback and approval. “The time spent on those activities can be redeployed back into where your time is best spent, which is around judgement, governance itself, making challenging decisions and then deploying that across the organisation you are governing,” he says.

Kunzler believes AI-enabled platforms also have the power to transform the planning phase of board meetings by allowing the review of previous minutes for agenda items, ensuring deadline or time-sensitive activities are prioritised and starting workflows to keep tasks on schedule. Using a tool called Agenda AI, the OnBoard platform can utilise previous agendas and meeting minutes, understand the decisions made and start to prepopulate a draft agenda. “You would then go through and say, ‘This makes sense’ or ‘We’re going to need a little more time here’, and then again through a click of a button, you can kick that into a thoughtful workflow that socialises it with your board, allowing them to be more efficient with their time and hopefully move to that next meeting in an informed way,” he says.

Kunzler acknowledges there is some reticence about the use of AI in board administration given the often sensitive and confidential matters boards discuss. He says security, confidentiality and the way information is managed and shared are the most common concerns he hears about using AI for board management. OnBoard has dealt with this issue by creating a ‘walled garden’ where information created and stored on the platform is never returned to the AI model for training and learning.

“Obviously, if you’re a board of directors, there are certain things that you don’t want in the public domain,” Kunzler says. “What we’ve done is say the information and the way we use AI will never − full stop, no exceptions, ever, ever − be used to train a model. That information never leaves OnBoard, and it never goes back into ChatGPT. “We’ve created a walled garden version and deployment of that technology that the customer uniquely controls,” he adds. Kunzler says OnBoard gives close attention to user experience when integrating AI into the platform, with an eye to alleviating concerns among users with less experience in using AI.

Turning data into outcomes

Within the ‘walled garden’ of the platform, data and information can be uploaded, and AI can be used to run queries and high-level analysis to help inform discussions and decisions. “The other thing we’ve done, because we understand the governance life cycle or flow for an institution, is we can build in prompts,” Kunzler says. At a time when obligations and compliance are critically important for boards, Kunzler believes AI can be a force for good. “Those activities, those obligations are much more critically important at times of challenge and perhaps turmoil; we cannot mess these things up,” he says. “We have to be on it, and if AI can be a force for good, not only allowing [organisations] to more intuitively and thoughtfully elevate the activity, but getting those things done from a compliance perspective, I’m certain that organisations would agree that that would be invaluable.”

OnBoard brings powerful, secure artificial intelligence directly into your board − simplifying agenda building, capturing meeting minutes, surfacing strategic insights and empowering leaders to make better decisions faster

Enable review of previous minutes for agenda items Ensure deadline or time-sensitive activities are prioritised Start workflows to keep tasks on schedule

AI-enabled platforms transform the planning phase of board meetings