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Illinois School Board Journal
September/October 2001
ASK THE STAFF:
Technology helps manage policy
This issue's question is addressed by IASB Director of Policy Services Cathy Talbert. You can contact her at ctalbert@iasb.com.
Question: I am a new board member. Our board policy manual is so big that I am overwhelmed by it. What can be done to reduce the manual to a more manageable size?
Answer: One of the most important duties of a school board is to determine lawful school board policy. The School Code provides that boards have the duty "to adopt and enforce all necessary rules for the management and government of the public schools of the district." These rules make up school board policy.
Policy must be written and available to the public in the district administrative offices. Clear, concise and lawful individual policies should be compiled in a board policy manual. The policy manual should:
Board members, administrators, staff, parents, students and community members all benefit when policy is clearly written and easily accessible. Large policy manuals can be overwhelming. Consequently, those who need to be familiar with policy content on a daily basis, or even occasionally, may feel they do not have the time or ability to wade through all that paper to find what they need.
A board can take steps to ensure that its policy manual is not overwhelming. Computer technology gives a board the opportunity to improve the development and maintenance of its manual. Policy updates required by state and federal law can be
provided to boards more quickly through electronic communication, allowing a policy manual maintained in a word processing file to be updated efficiently.
A table of contents, alphabetical index and cross-references can make topics easier to find. A policy manual online can be available 24/7 for board members, administrators, staff, parents, students and community members. Online policy manuals can use a search engine and have links to relevant statutes and court cases.
In the past, manuals often contained many short policies on related topics, such as agenda preparation, voting, rules of order and other meeting procedures. This allowed changes to be made quickly without significant amounts of typing. Word processing programs now enable boards to group what might have been 10 separate policies into a single, much shorter policy, reducing the size of the manual.
Including board policy and administrative procedures in one manual contributes to a large policy manual and may cause confusion between board work and staff work. Many school districts now maintain two manuals: one for board policy and one for administrative procedures.
Illinois school boards also are thinking more critically about how to use board time and what duties should appropriately be delegated to the superintendent. The result is fewer policies and more administrative procedures. Policy content now more accurately reflects efforts to spend significant time on goals and direction for the district and less time on administrative issues.
Clear, concise, policy drafting that codifies the board's policy decisions, without including lengthy board theory and philosophy, also will help to reduce the manual's size.
Effective policymaking requires good communication of policy.
Today's technology makes it possible to reduce the size of your board policy manual and to make it available 24/7!