Governing Effectively via a Framework for School Governance
The board adopts a vision that clearly describes the community’s desired student outcomes
(49 Questions to Ask Your Board) We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the Read More …
(49 Questions to Ask Your Board) Over the course of the next several months, questions 12 thru 22 will explore the board’s responsibility to provide a strategic voice on behalf of the community it serves. That voice is expressed through vision and values that guide the organization as it seeks to assure the community’s desires for student learning. Vision is a component of the board’s responsibility to provide guidance about outcomes desired for students well into an extended future. Questions Read More …
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 …