Sean William Doyle of Frankfort, Illinois, is president of the Summit Hill School District 161 Board of Education.
Charles William Eliot, former president of Harvard University, once observed that "in the campaign for character, no auxiliaries should be refused," a statement as true for the pursuit of more informed and resourceful school board leadership as it is for moral development. Sources of inspiration and insight are all around us, if we just open ourselves to their reception.
Like life itself, a school board presidency is a work in progress, and we never know how much time we have at our disposal to serve in that capacity. What follows is not intended to be a definitive treatise but an attempt to record some lessons learned during the first year of a board presidency in the hope that it may provide assistance to others.
When your fellow board members have elected you to be board president for a two-year term, take a moment to celebrate. After all, their vote represents an expression of confidence in your abilities to faithfully execute the stewardship of the office. Then take a deep breath, for this is the lull before the storm.
The learning curve for a new board president is as steep as it is for a new board member and while it can be expedited through conscious effort, it cannot be rushed. Also, your visibility in the new position will translate not only into increased contact from community members via phone calls and interruptions while you are cutting your grass or shopping in the local supermarket, but can also inversely result in a degree of isolation at times from fellow board members and district staff.
In compiling these observations, I tried to adhere to the advice of Marcus Aurelius, Roman emperor and stoic thinker, who wrote in his Meditations: "Make your rules of life brief, yet so as to embrace the fundamentals; recurrence to them will then suffice to remove all vexation, and send you back without fretting to the duties to which you must return."
So, without further ado, the observations …
1. Avoid hubris or arrogance. Never forget that service on a school board is a privilege, not a right. Learn from the example of Odysseus, the designer of the Trojan horse. He had a treacherous 10-year journey home after the Trojan War because he offended the divinities with his arrogance. A little humility keeps us grounded and being assertive and confident is the relative mean between being timid and being brash.
2. Accept that most issues are grayer than black and white and be pragmatic. Walking the tightrope between idealism and pragmatism is a difficult skill to master, but one that is essential to sound leadership. Democratic governance requires compromise and there is a reason why school boards have seven people serving staggered terms who must arrive at consensus for the good of the district. Sometimes your vote will be in the majority and sometimes it will be in the minority. Argue valiantly for your position, but once consensus is arrived at via majority vote, it is imperative that all board members support the decision. Remember that more of our true character is revealed in the way we handle situations that do not go the way we intend rather than the situations that do work out for us.
3. Devote yourself to a rigorous program of professional development and professional reading and encourage your fellow board members to do likewise. If you want to play like a professional, you have to practice like one. Take advantage of the many development opportunities offered by the Illinois Association of School Boards and similar organizations and be a voracious consumer of the plethora of professional literature on board service available out there.
4. As heretical as it may sound to some, one must accept the notion that education is business: it is trying to achieve certain defined outcomes by efficiently using its available resources. However, it is an enterprise far different from any other business. Its outcome, the educated student, is challenging to quantify and measure. Indeed, we must never look at our decision making as a solely quantitative exercise, and we must always take into account the human impact of our decisions.
5. Work diligently to become well versed in the legal and economic contexts of public education as well as parliamentary procedure. You don't have to become a lawyer or economist nor do you have to qualify to be the parliamentarian of Congress, but having a solid rudimentary knowledge of these three areas is integral to being a successful board president.
6. As Ronald Reagan stated at Reykjavik in response to the Soviet Union's offer on nuclear armaments: "Trust but verify." Engagement in politics has a tendency to make one cynical and suspicious of people's motives. Be skeptical, not cynical. Ask a lot of well-formed, specific questions (a healthy dose of intellectual curiosity is a plus) and never hesitate to inquire about the rationale behind a recommendation or data on the assessment and evaluation of a program or initiative.
7. Be fair and consistent. You don't have to subscribe to the legal concept of always standing by precedent, but you do need to be consistent. You will need the wisdom of Solomon to unravel some of the more complicated issues you will face.
8. Be a great, not just a good, listener. As Polonius instructs his son Laertes in Shakespeare's Hamlet: "Lend many thy ear, but few thy tongue." Resist the temptation to respond before your fellow board member has completely expressed a point of view. Insure that all board members have an equal opportunity to offer their perspectives. This may involve having to encourage those board members who may be reluctant to share their views. While you are as free as any other board member to offer your two cents on an issue, one of your main tasks as board president is to facilitate deliberation and keep it focused on the issue at hand.
9. Be conscious of how you communicate both verbally and non-verbally. Like it or not, you are always on stage; a nod can be perceived as assent, while a slouch or bad posture can convey disinterest.
10. Always be honest. Truthfulness is the key to your credibility as a leader. Whether dealing with the public, your fellow board members, the superintendent, staff or students, never be untruthful or misleading. Your words and your actions are truly your bond and if you give anyone even the slightest reason to doubt your veracity, your ability to lead is severely compromised.
11. Model exceptional boardsmanship. Leaders set the tone and expectations for the groups they lead, no matter what size the group is. If you want your fellow board members to act more civilly toward each other or be more reflective in their deliberations or to consistently follow the chain of command in handling complaints from the community, you need to consistently demonstrate such behavior.
12. Be decisive. In his farewell address to the Labour Party, Tony Blair commented: "The British people sometimes will forgive a wrong decision. But, you know something, they won't forgive not deciding." You were elected by the district voters to make tough decisions. Consider the multiple opinions of your colleagues as well as the background information on the issue carefully and vote your conscience. "Abstain" sparingly and only when sufficient grounds justify its use.
13. Be prepared for each board meeting. Read your board packet thoroughly before a meeting. Research the issues that your board is confronting and pay attention to the details.
14. Develop a thick skin, a titanium backbone and an iron stomach. Politics is a full contact sport and criticism comes with the responsibility of holding public office. Like coaches or managers, you will often be blamed when things go wrong (even when it is beyond your control) and, more rarely, praised more than you deserve. We are naturally inclined to take criticism personally, but it is more constructive to take it as an opportunity to be a better board president, not as an evaluation of your worth as a human being.
15. Keep the board focused on its governance function. Keep the board "in the balcony," focused on the bigger picture, rather than on the dance floor. It is quite easy and tempting for boards to usurp the district management from the professionals they hired to perform that function, but that is also a quick route to creating a school district that is chaotic and demoralized.
16. Aim for improvement, not perfection. No board is perfect. You will have to learn to work with people who possess divergent ideas on board governance and/or the direction of the district. Dissent is an entirely normal and generally healthy phenomenon for any democratic organization.
Team focus
What is unhealthy to the board's well-being are board members who are solely focused on one issue, who are uncivil toward their fellow board members and district staff, who think they know how to run a district better than trained professionals and thereby wind up micromanaging the district, or whose purpose for serving on the board is to undermine the district.
One of the more difficult challenges of a board presidency is to create a cohesive and productive team out of seven independent-minded individuals, a formidable task akin to herding cats. By a "cohesive and productive team," I do not mean a board that votes unanimously on every issue (indeed this is typically a red flag that something is amiss), but instead a board that is civil, thoughtful, focused on their mission and inclusive of all viewpoints in their deliberations.
When working with difficult board members, keep in mind the sage advice, again, of Marcus Aurelius: "Begin each day by saying to yourself: today I am going to encounter people who are ungrateful, arrogant, deceitful, envious and hostile … I can neither be harmed by any of them, for no one else can involve me in what is shameful and debasing, nor can I be angry with my fellow man or hate him, for we have been made for cooperation, just like the feet, the hands, the eyelids, and the upper and lower teeth."