Rick Maloney

Is Your Board Fully Prepared to Carry Out its Responsibilities? Board Readiness to govern is a board responsibility that sets the stage for carrying out its more observable responsibilities in three areas: Strategic Voice Read More …

Onboarding New Board Members? Recommit to the Oath of OfficeThe August issue of The American School Board Journal is now online. Its Features section includes an article (Oath of Office) in which I describe an opportunity Read More …

Six (Not So) Simple Rules for School Board SuccessEffective school boards build a base of competencies (knowledge and skills) that help them succeed in their roles. They know the difference between boardsmanship Read More …

NSBA Presentation Handouts At this year’s National School Board Conference I am presenting a session entitled “Boardsmanship Is Not Enough: We Need to BE, KNOW, and DO More to Reach Our Read More …

The Three-Legged Stool of Board Leadership This month’s edition (February 2023) of the American School Board Journal included a feature article that I wrote, describing leadership, including school board Read More …

2 Questions

A friend who edits a national publication on board leadership recently asked me a two-part question.  Which topics for board education did you find useful (and why)? And which topics were […]

This month’s issue of the American School Board Journal includes my article on board PD.

In the article I discuss 6 shortcomings that limit the board’s ability to renew and enhance its governing performance […]

Seven (Not So) Simple Rules for Board Success
– Part II

One way to portray leadership is via a three-legged stool – each leg must be present for the three to stand together – consisting of respo […]

Board success depends on many elements, including the organization’s leadership and culture, the board’s actions, knowledge, and character, and the situation, but the purpose of board leadership can be simply def […]

It was time for our annual board
retreat, when we set aside time to review the past year, assess, plan for
improvement, and refresh itself to begin anew in the coming year. We considered
the following questions […]

What types of boards are there? And how does board governance compare with teaching as a profession? Understanding the Danielson Framework for Teaching may offer a starting point for answering these […]

The Board Takes
Responsibility for Accountability

 “Whenever
the board gets a new member, a new board is formed.”

Part 1 of this post introduced the idea of
making the new members’ first day on the job on […]

The Board Takes
Responsibility for Strategic Voice and Operational Guidance

 “Whenever
the board gets a new member, a new board is formed.”

Part 1 of this post introduced the above (a traditional sayi […]

The best boards keep their noses in the business and their fingers out.

                                          Jim Brown (The Imperfect Board Member)

The Board Role in Supervision

As Jim Brown impli […]

Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.
Lord Acton
The Problem

Early in my first career (24 years in the US Army) I occasionally heard of a senior officer being removed from command due to […]

Boards Matter – Part IV (4th of 4 parts)

Only boards, because of the democratic power they derive from the people, because of their close links with the people, and because of their stability, can provide the l […]

Boards Matter – Part III

In the high-achieving districts, the board/superintendent team and school personnel consistently expressed an “elevating” view of students. Students were viewed as emerging and flexi […]

Boards Matter – Part II

…we found five district-level leadership “responsibilities” or “initiatives” with a statistically significant (p < .05) correlation with average student achievement.

Ensuring c […]