Category: Approach

How the board goes about its business

Another look at Questions #7-11 of “49 Questions to Ask Your School Board”

Rick Maloney

Strategic approach as a prerequisite for board readiness To be ready to exercise governance responsibilities on behalf of its community a board must take a strategic approach. Governance readiness depends on more than having the right governance mindset. Not only must a board assure that its thinking is strategic, it must also assure that its acting is strategic – developing routines that set the stage for effective work. To be fully ready the board must have the right governance approach Read More …

Questions 1-11 of “49 Questions to Ask Your School Board”

Rick Maloney

At this point, having reviewed the first 11 questions (the total number will be 49) and having considered at least a partial answer to each, let’s observe their connections, each with one another, and how they combine to illustrate the broader category of board readiness. Questions 1-11 deal with the board’s need to be ready with a foundation of knowledge, skills, and dispositions that enable it to carry out broad governance functions: One perspective from which to view board readiness Read More …

Question #11 – Does Your Board Take a Strategic Approach to Meetings?

Rick Maloney

(49 Questions to Ask Your Board) The school board meeting is the community’s window to the school system. The public often will assume schools are run the same way school board meetings are run. ― Gemberling et al1 This caution from the Key Work of School Boards reminds us of the importance of treating board meetings seriously. Like policy, meetings have the potential to be truly strategic or merely operational. The board meeting minutes from a $60 million district showed Read More …

Question #10 – Does Your Board Take a Strategic Approach to Policy?

Rick Maloney

(49 Questions to Ask Your Board) Boards should avoid spending time on routine operating policies, but they should be deeply involved in the development of reform policies, policies designed to change the district, in fundamental ways to improve student achievement and district operations. ― Don McAdams1 School boards should spend their finite available time primarily on what are clearly strategic policies rather than routine operating policies. A strategic approach to policy elevates the policy-making function, enabling it to make a Read More …

Question #9 – Does Your Board ‘Act’ in a Systematic Way?

Rick Maloney
Systematic, step-by-step

An effective board exercises discipline in a systematic approach to deliberation and decision-making, fitting each board action into a recognizable pattern of governing action that ensures the board’s structures and routines are guided by intentional decisions made in alignment with its strategic role. – more – (click on the image above)

Question #8 – Does Your Board ‘See’ With a Systems Perspective?

Rick Maloney

(49 Questions to Ask Your Board) Governing with a systems perspective means understanding not only that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, but that each of the parts is essential…effective governance flows from understanding and paying attention to all of these elements. – Katherine Gemberling et al1 A systems perspective enables a board to take a strategic view of the whole district before it acts. It ensures that the board considers how decisions targeting one part, Read More …

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 Read More …

The Ten-Year Agenda as a Strategic Device

Rick Maloney

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 …

The Board Agenda

Rick Maloney

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 …