John Cassel is IASB field services director for DuPage, North Cook and Starved Rock divisions.
So you want to know about school boards? With the publication of The School Board Fieldbook by Mark Van Clay and Perry Soldwedel, we finally have a foundational, comprehensive resource in a single volume.
As one who works with school boards, I am enthused about the book and what it might mean for governance practice across our nation. Not that I am totally in sync with everything in the book, but it is a good resource, outlining best practice and a vision of "the gold standard" for board excellence and outstanding schools.
The book provides guidance for newly elected board members, aspiring and veteran superintendents, boards that want to improve their governance practice, as well as board members and staff who care about quality schools.
The two authors are both experienced Illinois superintendents (30 years between them). Asked why they wrote the book, they offered four answers:
From where I sit, those answers are right on target.
A defining strength of the book is its insistence — and help — on maintaining a systems perspective. The authors define three roles, or perspectives, that comprise any school system:
The authors are clearly building on the insights of Peter Senge, Patrick Dolan, Richard DuFour and others who help us understand the importance of "systems thinking." Too often school board members have trouble understanding the whole because their view from the boardroom is limited. Van Clay and Soldwedel open an experienced window to each level and help the board better understand how its own role fits into the larger picture.
They also make a case for the critical importance of the strategic role. The success of the whole — the aim of every board — is dependent on each part effectively fulfilling its own responsibilities. The book offers practical suggestions as to why board members often abandon their strategic role and how to bolster satisfaction from the important, but delimited, tasks of the board.
One major focus of the book is around data and the importance of good data to making good decisions. While much of the book is a helpful articulation of governance wisdom, the data sections may feel like new ground to many. The book is full of charts, tools, measures and rubrics (many downloadable from the Solution Tree website) that will help boards understand and engage their work.
I do have a small quibble with the book — more about emphasis than omission. The authors do such a wonderful job of defining and describing the district system (the inside), but I am left wishing for more attention to the larger system (the district in its community).
An important way to think about the board is to see board members as sitting in trust (as stewards) for the whole community. A key strategic question is: "What does the community want from its schools?"
Granted, the book puts forth a keen interest in the input of parents and customer satisfaction in general, including some helpful information about parent surveys. But, I encourage us to go further. Generally the majority of citizens in our communities are not parents, so how do we devise a strategic perspective that engages our entire public?
On a practical level, there is a wonderful section on "signals that your board is in trouble." The authors offer practical advice on effective board practice and how to avoid the troubles that seem endemic to too many boards. They also review some areas that are typically problematic for many boards and offer a systems analysis, outlining approaches and resolutions that are responsive to the roles and responsibilities of both boards and superintendents. The four areas they address (to pique your interest): class size, negotiations, assessing student achievement and budgets.
Van Clay and Soldwedel have provided a splendid resource for the dedicated public servants who sit on the thousands of local school boards across our American democracy and the competent superintendent leaders with whom they partner.