The Representative Assembly meets for 48 hours (give or take) once a year, creates a bunch of Resolutions and New Business Items, and then adjourns hoping that the leadership will carry those out items. Unless the leadership (including the unelected Executive Director and various program staff) agree that the Resolutions and NBIs are worth pursuing, nothing happens except for a report the next year saying that they were not achievable.

Finally, the Board of Directors is made up of 2 kinds of people: those who have been there forever and new ones who are drafted with promises that the meetings won’t take up much time and they’ll get mileage and a small stipend for attending. The representation of members back home (in their own school districts, not the district at large, typically) is secondary.