Governing effectively via a Framework of School Governance
Comedian Henny Youngman had a joke (often repeated) that went like this: The patient says, “Doctor, it hurts when I do this.” [The doctor’s response:] “Then don’t do that!” Sometimes the first advice a board should follow if it wants to improve its performance is to find out what it does that hurts…then stop doing that.
Operational or Strategic? Most agendas, as described in a recent post (see The Board Agenda, August 18, 2017) are filled with operational matters. Finding out “what the staff are up to” is surely interesting to board members, and it is tempting to excuse it as part of the organizational accountability/evaluation/monitoring function for which a board is responsible, but it is too often just a matter of “wandering around” in the data. The problem with this situation is that there is Read More …
Board Business or Staff Business: An Agenda that Works – Because a board only acts when it officially meets, and board meetings only occur periodically, it is very important to pay attention to what the board actually does during meetings. In 2008 I wrote an article for the American School Board Journal, describing how our board structured its meetings to focus the board’s work on the board’s business (that which only the board can do, and that which is only Read More …