Question #7 – Does Your Board Take a Strategic Approach?

Rick Maloney

(49 Questions to Ask Your Board)

“Boards are powerful. They select; evaluate; and, if they choose, terminate superintendents. They set goals, allocate resources, create policy frameworks, and oversee management and are the bridge between districts and the publics they serve.“

– Don McAdams1

The above succinctly describes the school board’s role and broadly outlines a strategic approach to carrying out that role. The effective board has a clear sense of its purpose. It distinguishes the strategic work of the board from the operational work of superintendent and staff. The board carefully imposes a discipline on its work: listening to its community to learn and clarify values that guide the work, providing broad and visionary guidance for the future, monitoring performance, and assuring accountability to the community (its higher authority) for district success. It sets policy at a strategic level to guide the district. Its actions in meetings are strategic and align with its words as written in documents such as strategic plans and district policy.

The importance of this task. A strategic approach helps the board know when and how to pay attention to the right things that matter most for student outcomes, before focusing on doing things in the right way. A board operating at a strategic level avoids getting itself or its members tangled up in micromanaging operational details.

“Board member micromanagement has a negative effect on student achievement.“

― S.A. Peterson2

Valley of Detail. One of the first pieces of advice newly elected board members receive is to avoid micromanagement.

Scenario: A friend (we’ll call him Chuck) has several decades of board service under his belt, and similar experience as a trainer for the state school boards association. Chuck often refers to the “valley of detail” when describing an urge that tempts boards to descend into the minutiae of district operations. He advises staying at a higher level, above that valley. Chuck’s association staff colleagues, accustomed to reading news items or hearing reports about board misadventures, developed an informal (and necessarily underground) “board of the month” award based on the previous months’ errors. The winner one month was a board whose president met every Monday morning with the superintendent in order to inspect her calendar of appointments for the week so that he could approve them, item by item.

Now this was a board president deeply mired in the valley of detail! Besides irritating the superintendent and demoralizing staff, this approach is likely to result in a sort of role reversal as the superintendent tries to fill in for the more strategic board work that the board is neglecting when it focuses on staff work. It also gets in the way of progress on what matters most – student learning.

Many examples can be found of board members pursuing agenda items that fail the Is this strategic? test.  They include a candidate’s campaign promise to implement a pet instructional theory or political issue of the day promoted by an adult interest group of one kind or another. There are seemingly infinite distractions to which boards might fall prey. Each can cause the board to lose focus with respect to its strategic contribution to the bottom line of student learning outcomes. And most if not all the distractions fall into the category of what Crabill calls “adult interests.” The neglect of student outcomes by boards is almost always caused by adult behaviors motivated by adult interests.

“Student outcomes don’t change until adult behaviors change.”

– A.J. Crabill3

Adult behaviors that need to change can frequently be observed at school board meetings, during which very little to no time is allocated for setting, monitoring, or making decisions about student outcomes.

What about strategic planning? Doesn’t the strategic planning process promote the strategic thinking expected of the board role?

“People often confuse strategic thinking with strategic planning. Strategic thinking refers to the mindset that drives the work of governance. Strategic planning refers to the work of the organization’s staff as they develop specific operational goals, projects, and plans to implement the strategic direction set by the governing board and superintendent.”

– Davis Campbell and Michael Fuller4

When a board thinks strategically, it shapes and reinforces its own behavior with regular reminders to steer clear of taking on operational responsibilities that are more effectively performed by the superintendent and staff. Here is how Fairfax County, Virginia’s school board describes its approach to board work and its intent to remain at a strategic level:

“The board will govern in accordance with the law and strategic long-term vision:

  1. The primary purpose of the Board is to achieve the FCPS mission of educating all students through hiring and overseeing the Superintendent, setting policy, providing fiscal stewardship and accountability, and establishing and refining the goals outlined in the Strategic PlanThe Board will hire and oversee the Superintendent, set policy, provide fiscal stewardship, accountability, and transparency, and establish and refine the goals outlined in the Strategic Plan.
  2. The Board will encourage full exploration of diverse viewpoints.
  3. The Board will hold itself accountable by monitoring its performance periodically and participating annually in professional development.
  4. The Board will focus on strategic leadership and give direction to the Superintendent through majority decisions of the full Board…“

– Fairfax County Public Schools5

The effective board stays above the fray, assessing every issue for its impact on the whole system. It follows a systematic process, listening to and learning from the community, setting goals and writing policy, monitoring for progress, and responding to monitoring by reviewing and updating its more strategic goals and policies. It writes policy at a strategic level to govern the district at times when it cannot be present. It establishes a discipline in its meetings (where the board does its work) that helps it maintain a strategic perspective. It requires the preparation of a meeting agenda composed of strategic items that the board has selected beforehand to advance the work of the board.

Strategic Approach consists of 4 elements: Systems Perspective; Systematic Process; Strategic Approach to Policy; and Strategic Approach to Meetings.

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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Next: Question #8 – Does Your Board ‘See’ with a Systems Perspective?

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  1. Pingback: #6 – Does Your Board Have the Work Ethic Needed for Growth? – governance101.com

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