How to Be a Highly Effective School Board?

Answer 1

There are five common practices of highly effective school boards. Public school board members are made up of citizen taxpayers given the opportunity to govern local schools. Quite often they are non-educators with little to no experience in the classroom or in the faculty room. Yet they are often blamed for problems that exist in schools and mandated by the media and the public to champion reform, turn around poor performing districts and leave no child behind! While there is very little research to suggest what makes school boards effective, there are at least five common practices of regular board habits that emerge when “highly-effective” schools are dissected from student performance to board level action:

The first common practice that highly effective school boards perform is to define and publish documents that explain and distinguish roles. These documents set objective behavioral and functional expectations for all members of the leadership team--from board members, through superintendent to building principals and other administrative staff.

Secondly, operation and communication protocols are established. These address significant operational questions and function to guide the process of board leadership. Questions such as “How are agenda items produced?” and “Who is authorized to speak to the media?” are presented discussed and determined.

A third common practice is that highly effective boards participate in goal-setting retreats. Discussions regarding student achievement are not best accomplished during formal meetings. These conversations require a more informal setting with less time restrictions than an official meeting allows.

Additionally, highly effective board members and their superintendents use benchmarks, objective data and other measures to track progress. Leadership is required to apply data-driven best practices to guarantee progress and improvement.

Having agendas that are linked to goals is a fifth common practice of highly effective school boards. Monthly agendas must reinforce the board’s priorities. Good leadership requests ideas for presentations on different aspects of the boards established goals and schedules discussions on each.

These common practices form a strong pattern and a noteworthy consensus among school boards that are considered highly effective. They help the leadership team build effective policies, leading to productive practices that enhance student achievement.