Description

A 7-minute YouTube TEDx talk on governance of local communities.

School Boards, City Councils, and other public boards

Those to whom the board answers

Public boards are creations of the government (federal, state, or local) and therefore have legal obligations to the government in its role as ‘owner-representative’ of all the people under whose authority the laws are written. For example, a public boards/councils have a duty to operate in public, and transparency of public documents is not only a value, it’s a mandate. People residing within a legal boundary are normally considered constituents to whom the board must respond. The instrument of ‘investment’ by those residents is a public election by which board members are selected. Elections are the periodic means by which board members are held accountable to the expectations of the community of owners.

Those whose interests are served

Public boards serve defined communities within a specific geographical boundary. For example, a city council has residents who receive city services based on where those people live. A school board provides education to school-age children residing within the geographical boundaries of the school district. As in the case of corporate and nonprofit boards, all is not necessarily crisply defined. For example, city councils serve not only residents, but also others who conduct business within the city boundary, or who visit the city. Open enrollment statutes in many states provide for inter-district transfer of students whose parents choose to enroll their children in a specific district or school, often based on a space-available decision process.

Overlapping Roles

When parents represent the interests of a student at a school board meeting, they are attending as customers. But a parent who also resides within the district boundaries is part of the government that ‘owns’ the schools, and a parent who votes in school board elections will likely identify him/herself not as a customer, but as an owner to whom the school board has a duty to answer. The same phenomenon happens at a city council meeting: Someone who has the interests of a customer of city services may also have a part (even if a small part) to play in the authority over that city government, and will likely invoke that authority when demanding that something be done. So there are often overlaps between those to whom the board must answer and those who are served by the organization.