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 defined as assuring, on behalf of the community, that the organization succeeds. Leaders at every level, including the board in its leadership role, must accept full responsibility for their level in the organization. They must connect with and know those whom they serve.
Effective school boards follow seven (not so) simple rules for success. Part I of this post will provide Rules 1-3:
Rule 1: Accept responsibility for everything.
Rationale:
New board members are enthusiastic and sometimes single-minded about serving specific constituents’ interests, arriving on the scene with the intention of “fixing” a single burning issue, or any of a thousand little things. After all, voters have the same tendency to focus on discrete parts of the whole, and it is easier to promise, and focus on, such specifics in a campaign. Voters rarely look at the big picture, fully comprehending the board’s responsibility for everything, including the many activities board members cannot easily do themselves. Indeed, boards should not even try. Assuming a mindset of total responsibility does not mean that board members personally do everything, and it does not mean the board should meddle in those “thousand little things.” They have a superintendent and professional staff for that. Boards feeling free to get lost in the details forget that they are simultaneously responsible for the whole, even those areas they are ignoring at the moment.
Implication:
Make an open commitment to the proposition that the board is responsible to the community for everything the school district does or fails to do.
Why it isn’t so simple:
A board that does not take full responsibility for everything the district does or fails to do (leaving the superintendent, acting on their behalf, to shoulder the full burden of responsibility to the community) feels free to meddle in single issues, diving into the details of at most 5-10% of all district functions. Each such issue may have been selected based on careful deliberation, but to the organization its choices seem random and arbitrary. When it does this the board abandons even the appearance that it accepts full responsibility for the remaining 90-95% of district activities they have chosen to ignore.
Boards that follow this rule:
A board that takes responsibility for the “whole enchilada” (everything the district does or fails to do) realizes that it cannot possibly do everything. It must therefore orient itself toward working through others to assure success for the whole system, and it must realize that changing any part of the district affects the entire system.
Rule 2: Develop positive beliefs, values, and attitudes and board competencies.
Rationale:
Competencies (knowledge and skills) are important. We need skills to be able to do what effective boards do (hire the superintendent, set policies, approve a budget, monitor performance, account to the community for performance.) We need knowledge to inform those actions with an understanding of topics like public school law (to include student and employee rights); state laws affecting the board’s actions (for example, open public meetings, public records); parliamentary procedures/Robert’s Rules of Order (so that the board can run its meetings in an orderly way); school finance (so the board can understand the complexities involved in budget preparation); so that we stay in compliance and steer clear of illegal or unethical behaviors or situations. But to effectively make use of these competencies, we need dispositions that make it more likely we will do so in a timely and effective way. Dispositions are internal characteristics (values, attitudes, beliefs) that in combination make up our character. They enable, empower, and equip a person to act. When that behavior is effective, a board’s dispositions contribute to consistent and reliable board performance. If board dispositions prompt dysfunctional behavior, students will suffer.
Implications:
Board knowledge (the subject of most training programs for new board members) and skills are important, but they are not enough. In addition to developing such competencies, we also need to cultivate dispositions (beliefs, values, and attitudes) that enable the board to act when action is required, and to do it well.
Why it isn’t so simple:
Research into the effect of a school board’s dispositions with regard to student success is eye-opening. The Iowa Lighthouse Study conducted in the late 1990s, for example, illustrates that an ‘elevating’ belief about students’ capacity to learn at high levels is strongly related to higher levels of student success. Alternately, a board that has cultivated the habit of making excuses for poor student results is strongly correlated with lower results on measures of their students’ success.
Boards that follow this rule:
A board that believes in the ability of students to achieve at high levels, and has similarly positive values and attitudes is strongly correlated with higher results in measures of their students’ learning.
Rule 3: Become an active and positive link between the community and its schools.
Rationale:
The board’s role is to serve the community (its boss) by adopting/espousing community values, and reflecting those values in board work and the work of the schools. To learn those values, boards must establish and continuously maintain a strong connection with the community.
Implication:
The board must represent and serve the public in its work, so it must connect with members of the public to learn their values.
Why it isn’t so simple:
As practiced, activities that are considered community engagement frequently take the form of a one-way affair, designed to communicate the district message to the public more than to inform the board by learning from the public. The intent of community engagement can then seem more inclined toward presenting a positive image about the district in order to gain community support.
Boards that follow this rule:
A board that serves as a positive link between the community and the organization is one that serves the public, and regularly creates opportunities to connect. It listens to community input and incorporates community values into policy guidance. It communicates accountability work, and the results of that work, to ensure the community is informed on district performance.
© 2019 governance101.com
Rick Maloney, EdD has more than twenty years of experience as a local school board member and nine years as a director of his state school boards’ association. He is a board consultant and author of A Framework for School Governance (2017). and Putting Policy Governance to Work (2018). He can be reached at
rmaloney@governance101.com or rick_maloney@hotmail.com