I spent two days at the California School Board Association (CSBA) 2024 annual conference this past week. Critical issue-sessions/workshops and informal polling through casual conversations provided some insight into what's keeping school boards and superintendents up at night, including artificial intelligence, fiscal challenges and declining enrollment, gender identity, extremism, wellness, and the blurred line between politics and governance. Schools have become contested spaces.
My takeaway, based on multiple conversations with school board members and superintendents, is that many school boards lack a structured framework to make decisions, reduce conflict, and align actions with organizational goals, all critical tools necessary to operate successfully in contested spaces. Based on my random sample (validating the research literature), most board members and superintendents were not sure if they followed a specific governance model or operating system (i.e. Operational, Managerial, Traditional, or Policy). I have concluded that most boards draw from each model in undefined ways and then, depending upon the specific function (e.g. fiscal, HR/personnel, student achievement, public perception, etc...). For example, some school boards are deeply involved in personnel decisions and some school boards delegate that management function entirely to the superintendent. I am arguing that when school boards adopt policy-driven approaches to school district governance, five critical high-functioning governance practices are achievable:
Clear boundaries between governance and management;
Trust and constructive collaboration among board members;
A focus on long-term objectives rather than operational details;
Minimize entrenched conflicts and personal disagreement;
A reliance on established policies and data to guide decisions.
Below are the three common pitfalls and pervasive mistakes governance teams make, followed by ways to avoid them or correct them. They fall into a few general categories that most governance experts agree lie at the root of low functioning governance teams, primarily misunderstanding their purpose, failing to define roles and responsibilities, and holding itself accountable through a structured process/operating system. While adopting an operational system (framework/governance model) will not turn a low-functioning governance team into a high-functioning governance team overnight, it will serve as a foundation that a committed school board can build upon to improve decision-making, foster positive group dynamics, and enhance overall board effectiveness.
If school boards expect the team on the operational side of the school district house to continuously improve its performance, it too should continuously ask itself what steps it is taking to improve its performance.
Pitfall #1: Failure to Establish Behavioral Norms
Before defining roles and responsibilities, governance teams should set norms for how the team will interact with each other on a continuous basis, including how to sort out their differences so they do not compromise their moral imperative to govern effectively.
Preventive/Corrective Actions and Strategies:
Norm Setting: A 2-hour exercise I do in my governance workshops is ask the governance team, as individuals, to identify behaviors of low-functioning and high-functioning teams on color-coded sticky notes. The team then works together to offset the low-functioning behaviors by covering them with the corresponding high-functioning behavior. Once complete, if any low-functioning behaviors remain uncovered, the team discusses how to offset them with an additional norm. These behaviors become the team’s norms and should be agreed upon, documented, and publicized by board resolution. In the event the board finds itself with a member(s) who consistently and egregiously place themselves outside the group norms, the board uses the norms to self-correct to avoid the awkwardness of relegating the task to the superintendent.
Pitfall #2: Lack of a Clear Vision and Goals
“When a man does not know what harbor he is making for, no wind is the right wind.” This ancient Roman adage was summed up by baseball legend, Yogi Berra, who said, “If you don't know where you're going, you might not get there.” In both cases, it’s suggested that you still may get to where you want to go, but it will not be by design and consequently fraught with peril (Like Alice in Wonderland when she was advised by the Cheshire cat that it didn’t matter which path she chose at the fork because she didn’t know where she was going). Not only does an intentionally communicated vision make clear to students, teachers, parents, and community members exactly where the district is going, but it also serves as the foundation for all policy decisions of the board, and everything the superintendent does to operationalize them.
Preventive/Corrective Actions and Strategies:
Visioning and Goal Setting: At the very least, governance teams should revisit their mission, vision, values, and goals annually to ensure they support improved outcomes for all students, particularly marginalized populations. A valuable exercise I do with governance teams is identify artifacts and evidence that the values, beliefs, and interests of the community (gathered routinely with perception and street data) are clearly reflected in the current mission, vision, values, and goals of the district. The primary goal of this activity is to help bring clarity to the importance of organizational coherence (a shared depth of understanding) and ensure that alignment (i.e. all district and school site plans align) is not mistaken for coherence.
Pitfall #3: The Absence of a Structured System of Governance
At the end of the day (or of a board member’s term) it’s common for board members and superintendents alike to lament that too much time was spent on administrative tasks and operational issues, and too little time on student issues. Whether or not a formal full scale governance model is adopted, savvy superintendents are smart to work closely with their board to establish an internal operating system to prevent trivial operational matters from dominating school board meetings. Governance models provide structure and challenge broken mental models of governance that are built on custom and tradition, not sound practices.
Preventive/Corrective Actions and Strategies:
Most school boards don’t control their own agenda. The superintendent and cabinet members do. When the board determines how to spend their time, the superintendent and board president develop the agenda. Other than statutory requirements and matters of compliance, items should be proactive (future-oriented), not reactive, and revolve around student outcomes, equity gaps, emerging trends, organizational threats, and allocating resources to optimize student learning, not what color to paint schools or who should be selected as the next principal of Happy Elementary School.
Conclusion
By adopting and consistently following a governance system tailored to a school district's specific needs, governance teams can enhance their functionality and positively impact student outcomes (which is why school districts exist), avoiding some of the pitfalls and pervasive mistakes I've outlined above.
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