(49 Questions to Ask Your Board)
Scenario: Bianca and Sal lingered in the Balboa School District parking lot after a meeting in which next year’s calendar was a hot topic: start and end dates, holidays, the timing of semesters, graduation, etc. In addition, many decisions were made about hiring, contracting for maintenance, and procurement of equipment and supplies. A relative newcomer to the board, Bianca observed that “We never seem to get around to discussing what the community wants us to achieve over the long-term for our kids – how we want our graduates prepared for their future.” Sal replied, “We went through a long-range planning effort several years ago when the superintendent was in her first year.” There is a printed booklet in the district office, and you can read about it on the website under “Strategic Plan.”
This board seems to have considered strategic planning as an event to be completed rather than an ongoing part of the governing process. A status quo mindset prompts the board to say “Been there. Done that!” when referring to its responsibility to speak strategically.
Planning can help a school board operate more effectively. I joined a board that had a strategic plan that had been created at least two years before I arrived, and which extended five years into the future from the time I became a member. During the first half of my term on the board, I never once heard my board colleagues or anyone else refer to that strategic plan – the product of an elaborate process. The strategic plan might as well have been placed in a bottle and thrown into the nearby Atlantic. ― Gene Maeroff1
Planning is important, as long as it is relevant to you and all those you represent.
“Your board has a mandate to represent two major publics. Just as your responsibilities go both ways – to the schools and to the community – so must your communication.” ― NSBA2
Vision and values inform the board as it speaks for the district in two directions, inward and outward. A board expresses strategic voice internally via bylaws, policies, and strategic plans, all written at a strategic level to guide the organization with the community’s long-term vision for desired student outcomes and values that guide the work toward that vision. Vision and values can be expressed internally through a strategic plan and strategic level policies. However, in order to remain relevant as living documents written guidance must also be regularly consulted, used, and reinforced by the board’s behavior. The board must assure that those living documents serve as the community’s voice for the needs of students.
Vision and values can be expressed externally via the board’s advocacy efforts. Advocacy speaks externally, directed toward the community to assure local support, and toward state and national policymakers for their support, by communicating a shared vision and system needs as well as core beliefs and values that are adopted by the board to assure long-term student learning outcomes.
Strategic Voice is an area of responsibility in which the board supplements the vision and values described in state law for schools with locally defined vision and values that are identified by listening to community members, then channeling the community’s hopes and dreams into a long-term vision of the community’s desired future for students and enduring values about what is most important for their education.
Like the needle of a compass, the community’s vision and values enable the board to set direction and point the way. Strategic voice is stronger when communicated in writing and reinforced by regular use.
Strategic Voice. [Defining question: How does the board give voice to the community’s hopes and dreams for students?]
A major responsibility of the board is to give voice to the community’s values and vision, both internally through the district’s policy guidance to staff and externally through the board’s advocacy efforts, informing voters, community members, and state and federal policymakers.
Vision and Values are two components of Strategic Voice.
Vision is a description of the desired future for district students. Student outcomes are the bottom line for success, so a clear and stable vision statement describing desired results for students guides staff efforts to achieve those results. The board should allow the superintendent and staff considerable latitude in choosing how to achieve the desired future. But that latitude should not be unlimited.
Values about the work of the district provide additional guidance to supplement our vision. Any means the superintendent chooses will be acceptable if they move the district toward long-term success, are true to community values, and remain within the bounds of legality and ethics.
The effective board continuously keeps vision and values at the forefront of district consciousness, serving as a steady guiding light, pointing the way for all board and district work. It speaks for the community internally through policy that strategically guides the district and externally through advocacy efforts on behalf of that vision and those values to influence policy makers and others at local, state and federal levels.
NOTE: The opinions expressed in these blog entries are informed by references cited herein, and the experiences of the author. Your comments are welcome additions to the conversation.
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Excerpt from:
- A Framework for School Governance (2018), Rick Maloney
References:
- 1School Boards in America: A Flawed Exercise in Democracy (2010), Gene Maeroff
- 2Becoming a Better Board Member (2006), NSBA
Next: Question #13 – Does Your Board Give Voice to the Community’s Vision for the Future?